The Descent
by Miss Slaughter
Summary: Saben Frost escaped Them once but the Night was never far behind. On the road with her band her life slowly falling to pieces she is destined to love and lose again and again. And so begins her descent into the Night World.
1. Prologue

Prologue

November 1986

The sound of Night. It was the sound of her own stuttering breath. Her eyes were closed tight as Danny Somtow's fingers slithered up her thigh, his fingertips almost breaching her pink cotton panties but the glass doors beneath them shattered instead.

Icy air thundered through the house, a many limbed elemental shoving bedroom and bathroom doors wide open.

Danny was already back in his bunk, shrinking beneath his colourful red and green teddy bear bed clothes. Saben put a hand over her mouth to dull her own yelp of fear, heart hammering with panic as the footfalls of a dozen people marched in tandem.

_It's a dream, a bad dream_, Saben thought to herself.

It was Baba Lucine's house, a fortress set deep in dense forestland, miles away from the city and civilization. A place even God had forgotten.

Danny was grabbed first, gnarled black fingers grasping at his shirt and him screaming like a girl. It would have made the other kids laugh but Saben didn't laugh, instead she bit her bottom lip until she tasted the copper tang of her own blood.

More tall dark figures appeared in the room, making no sound now. Cold black hands plucked her from her bed and she was dragged down to the living room where the other fosterlings had been gathered. Nine pairs of wet eyes stared at nothing in particular, but Saben looked from side to side, sucking on her broken lip to stop the tears prickling behind her eyes.

The nightmare intruders had trampled glass into the house and some of the children had cut their feet on the pieces, some shards protruded from their flesh but they didn't seem to notice or care Saben flinched, never having liked the sight of blood or gory wounds.

Of the ten children gathered only two were old and large enough to defend themselves but they remained silent. Three of the strangers paced in front of them and silence pervaded.

_It's a robbery_, that was her first thought but a horrible taste clung to the pallet of her mouth, the bittersweet scent oozed from the strangers and it made her want to choke. "Where's Baba?" Saben asked unable to keep silent another second.

Danny, who sat nearby, grabbed her fingers and squeezed hard. _Shut The Fuck Up._ But Baba Lucine was nowhere to be seen and it seemed impossible that she would be anywhere else.

One figure approached her, his face was a mask of black fabric. _Just a nightmare, _she thought, shaking of Danny's feeble grip and reached up, peeling back the fabric to reveal a serene human face and electric blue eyes that were not human at all.

His eyes were filled with malicious intent, they were both cold and hot and fixed to her face and as she uncovered his mouth, he slapped her hard across the cheek. "Silence."

The slap made her ears ring, her cheeks flooded with colour and throat clogged with shame. "Where's Baba Lucine?" She persisted tremulously.

"She's resistant." His companion mumbled through its black mask.

His companion removed her mask and she was beautiful. Fucking stunning and that was what made her frightening. Her beauty was not real. Somehow Saben knew that the strange woman was not what she appeared to be on the outside.

"You will not speak unless spoken to." The man spoke to Saben and then turned to the others. "Do you understand?"

His companion snorted contemptuously.

Saben opened her mouth as if to speak but the stranger captured her chin between thumb and forefinger and squeezed. It made blood ooze from her bitten lip and trickle onto her chin. "Understand?" She could feel his voice vibrate through her bones.

He gathered her blood on his gloved fingertip and put it between his lips to suck the blood off of it whilst he stared meaningfully into her eyes. She felt both sick and compelled, licking her lips.

Another of the masked people stepped forward. "You aren't meant to harm the merchandise." He whispered not to be overheard but Saben heard.

"Just a little taste." Blue eyes said. But there was something in his posture that wanted more than a little taste, it was the same kind of more Danny wanted and something else besides. Something too primal and brutal for her small mind to comprehend.

He released his hold on her and she fell back into the other children, they moved allowing her to be assimilated into their ranks, their faces blank, postures as stiff as statues.

Where was Baba Lucine? She looked at the children on either side of her but their expressions offered no answers, no comfort. Their tears had dried and she felt the lull of their indifference. One of them had pissed themselves, that mixed with the stench of the strangers made her gag.

"Is this all of them? Eight…nine…ten?" Blue eyes asked impatiently.

"Yes."

"A good batch just as the old witch promised."

"Good?" Blue eyes turned his head to spy Saben sinking into the crowd. He pointed at her with a gloved finger, the one that had her blood on it. "That's arguable."

"Leave her alone, Abberline."

If there had been a response they never heard one though a sudden intense expression crossed Abberline's face. It made Saben cringe.

"All of them orphans." The woman piped up to divert the tension. "Just as she promised."

Saben kept one eye on the door, she expected Baba Lucine to enter at any moment. This was Baba's house after all, her sanctuary and they were her children every one of them. As much as Saben clung to those thoughts, Baba Lucine did not make an appearance.

She had to escape alone. The other kids were growing increasingly more passive, their expressions were docile almost dreamy and even Danny had stopped trying to touch her. These people were evil and they wanted to harm her, it was all becoming painfully clear. Saben wasn't going to stick around to find out how.

After more excruciating waiting, Abberline's eye occasionally set on her and she pretended to be like the others. Expressionless. Soon they were being herded into the expansive drive where three unmarked white vans were parked in a row.

Baba's car was not in its usual place.

Panic galvanized the contents of Saben's stomach. The cold penetrated the others' numb wits, as they were all wearing thin cotton night clothes and others less that that. Shivering, the group mustered the instinct to huddle together.

Saben's concentration slipped, the cold disturbed her, made her expressionless mask slip to a bad-tempered glare. More dark clad figures - perhaps male perhaps female – surrounded them though not one of them were concentrating on the shivering mass of child flesh.

"Saben we have to stick together." Danny whispered as he noticed her inching away.

She stared at the group, at Danny's blotchy face and thought of his wandering fingers, his toothpaste saliva and panting breath. This was her chance. "Go fuck yourself." She hissed and ran into the night.

She could hear the sudden swell of noise as the strangers realized she had made a run for it. They were giving chase, she knew it despite the only real sound being the snap of twigs and crush of grass beneath her bear feet.

She let her tears flow freely thinking only of escaping.

She had planned the rout when she had first come to Baba Lucine's, though had only ever threatened to use it. The grounds beyond the fenced garden was wild, filled with gnarled trees and exotic plants. It was dark and she couldn't quite make out what was coming in the distance.

The shadows stretched to large mythical monsters, gaping jaws and sharp fingers lunging out at her.

Even as she thought of falling, she snagged her dress on a thorn bush, scratched her thighs and legs and the vines brought her to the ground with a thump. Air escaped her in one big rush and she was choking on despair.

Abberline landed silently beside her. She saw his boots first, inches from her head, she slowly lifted her face to meet his eyes and they glowed eerily in the moonlight. She grit her teeth, waiting for him to kick her in the jaw or reach down to grab fistfuls of her hair and drag her back to the vans.

Instead he crouched beside her.

She looked into his face and his expression had lost some of its coldness, and she realized he was young and his skin seemed to glow as if lit by the moon. He had slender cuts on his cheeks from where he'd been whipped by his dash through the trees.

"There's a clear path between the two cedars." He said softly.

Her mouth fell open into a 'o' of surprise.

He licked his lips looking warily around the silent wood. "Go, before I change my mind."

She got to her feet and her knees were gashed. His eyes flicked down to her knees and the terrifying need crept into his expression and any shred of benevolence had surely left him. She began to limp away, not tempted to look back once. She limped on until she had no more strength left in her skinny little frame.

When she woke up late the next morning, she found herself bleeding, hurting but alive.


	2. Chapter 1

One

January 1994

Abberline was irritated.

He muttered beneath his breath as his compulsion to visit the Black Iris club became overwhelming to the point of pain, a nagging ache in his sides. He had other, more pressing matters to attend to. Affairs of the Night.

He shouldn't have been there, pushing past the glowering skin walker at the door, descending the precarious staircase to the bowels of the shit hole where the air throbbed with music and magic.

The club was built in the basement of an empty tenement, an abandoned housing project on the outskirts of Buffalo, New York. He had trekked on foot for miles to get to the spot and as he took a seat at the greasy bar, with a petulant stare he ordered a double Jack.

The place was crowded for a Monday night. Lamia, Vampires, Witches, Skin Walkers and Fae intermingled on the floor. He wondered idly what had drawn them all here.

He caught glimpses in the distorted mirror behind the bar, faces he half recognised, though he did not extend a greeting. No on had the balls to approach him anyway. He nursed his drink, swirling the ice around his glass until the agitated bartender deliberately cleared his throat.

"Long time no see." A woman slithered into the stool beside him. She was Amazonian, a goddess, standing taller than his 6 foot height and radiating Power like cheap perfume. She was Abaca. Unmistakable. A witch that dealt in Mysteries. The only person with balls enough to approach him.

"Not long enough it seems." He mumbled whilst sipping from his glass.

The aroma of Abaca's abundant black hair was a subtle enticing spell, it began to irritate his throat until he spluttered, spilling diluted Jack over his chin. Abberline hated magic.

"You're no fun tonight."

"I'm not here for pleasure."

She said something sour before she and departed. What else could be in this rancid womb for? The thought made him get to his feet to leave. That was when he saw her.

"This is Life After Baba Lucine" A human girl in her middle teens stood on the darkly lit stage, her bright pink hair glowed softly, delicate fingers cradled the mic aimed at her lips like the barrel of a gun, her voice was husky and haunted.

He blinked. The guitars roared, the drummer striking an odd pattern and the bass pounding hard and heavy. The music was dark and intense and it commanded the People's attention like a spell. And then the girl began to scream.

Saben smiled as she accepted the envelope with a few bills. It was enough to get to the next Black Iris in a backwater somewhere, Vinnie the tour manager knew the details.

"How much?" Geoff Deckard her guitar player mumbled around his half smoked Marlboro.

"Couple hundred." She shrugged and thrust the money deep down into her jeans pocket. "Enough."

She walked out the back entrance, a hand on the wall to guide her up a rickety staircase and a badly lit hallway. She wanted to escape the ambience of the Black Iris. The crowds of creepy rich kids that ran in droves to these clubs made her queasy. There was something about the bartender that made her flesh crawl, something in his smile that was razor edged and incomprehensibly dangerous.

It was different from the other venues they played.

Though she could not deny that playing this subterranean circuit, top secret locations, paid in abundance. Money after all made the world spin. Deckard reminded her of this every time she suggested ditching a Black Iris show.

"Oh little girl, where are you going?"

The voice ricocheted about the stairwell, Saben froze in mid-step immediately dropping eyes to the ground. "I'm on my way out." She managed to say before her insides seemed to clench with panic, her mind buzzing with warning bells as she slowly became deaf, dumb, blind and mute.

A woman stepped in front of her, tall and glorious, vampy and dangerous. She was humming as she twisted a lock of Saben's neon pink hair around a manicured fingertip, a manic smile spread on her generous mouth. "You're too precious. What can you be, fifteen, sixteen?"

She wanted so desperately to say _I Have To Be Going Now _and run up the staircase but her lips refused to form the words, her tongue was large and lazy in her mouth. The scent of the girl was intoxicating, herby, as if a rancid fist had been forced down her throat.

"Abaca." Interrupted. "Get out of here, you stupid little girl."

The spell broken. Saben took the opportunity to take the few remaining steps to the outdoors in two large strides.

Abaca sighed heavily. "You owe me."

"She's just a child." Abberline reminded from the shadows.

"Meat." Abaca spat on the floor.

He approached her fast, grasping a handful of flagrant hair and drawing her close enough to kiss. "Flouting Night World law is punishable by death."

"And who's going to tell?" She spoke tremulously, palm splayed on his chest to hold him back, to soften him and seduce him. "We could share, Cebren."

He took hold of her throat. "Don't call me that." He hissed through his sharp teeth and she began to tremble, her throat spasming beneath his grasp.

"Let's get the fuck out of here." Saben pounded her fist on the hood of the van.

"C'mon." Pin Cushion, drummer and driver held out his hands as if to call truce between Saben and the van.

"You in a hurry?" Deckard asked lighting a fresh cigarette.

She half turned to glimpse the tall stranger from the bar staring at her from the stairwell she had just emerged from. She looked back at Geoff and extended her middle finger, "go fuck yourself Deckard."

She climbed through the side, hunching down between the crashes and rides, her feet splayed over her battered hard case where her 1970s Les Paul custom guitar and other only material possessions were housed.

"She's always causing fucking trouble." Deckard complained, flicking his cig into the night before climbing into the front seat. "Can't stay and just relax after a show always have to be on the fucking move.."

"Everybody in." Pin, ignored Deckard's diatribe and ushered the bass player, Heather Mazahura into the back seat.

The van took three attempts to start up. Saben lifted herself to peek out of the crud stained window and felt the awful quiver in her insides, the sudden loss of breath. The stranger was standing in a swathe of shadows, staring at her. His eyes were glowing.

"What did you say?"

"His eyes are fucking glowing." She hissed.


	3. Chapter 2: The Sterback Blues

Two

January 1994

The night air was bitter as it leaked through cracked motel window. Saben Mariley Frost was spread on her back in the greasy hotel linen half drifting in and out of sleep. Her skin felt hot, as if possessed, simmering. Her hands slithered over her hips, callused fingertips skimmed over protruding bones, tickling the fringe of her underwear.

In moments like these there were few thoughts that penetrated the feeling all consuming desire, except his face, electric blue, a sudden soft expression and slender cuts on pale cheeks.

Those eyes that seemed to glow. Primal, magnetic and beautiful.

There was a rude banging on her door. "Sabe, let me in." It was Geoff Deckard's muffled voice on the other side.

She collapsed back with a frustrated sigh. She glanced at the digital clock flashing 3am. "Fuck off, Deckard."

"Please."

"Not tonight." She pressed her face into the musty motel pillow and closed her eyes.

"Are you sure this is right?"

The vast Victorian house looked as if it were ready to cave in. Heather Mazahura rolled her eyes to the weathervane creaking from left to right, weighing the chances as to when the house would collapse.

Saben swore under her breath. "No signal." She held up the cell phone like a sceptre trying to get a signal.

"They'll have a phone inside." Deckard said as he lighted a new cigarette eyes not quite reaching hers.

Both Saben and Heather stared expectantly, waiting for Deckard to lead the way. His eyes moved from the girls to the sinking structure and back again. "Ladies first."

"Chicken shit." Saben grabbed her guitar case and strode toward the house.

The air was biting, there was still snow on the ground in Sterback. Snow so deep her boots sunk to the ankle. Light speared through the house, throwing glittering kaleidoscope of colour across the porch. The stained glass was cut into the shape of an iris.

"I'm not sure this is the place, Sabe." Heather said softly. She was still rooted to the spot, eyes on the quivering weathervane.

Saben didn't hesitate, didn't have time to pussyfoot around, she banged on the door with a righteous fist.

It was eerily quiet.

"Looks like nobody's home." Heather said at her ear, the sudden proximity of her voice made Saben drop her hard case, it snapped one of the weak decking boards in two.

"We're too early." Deckard shouted as he climbed back into the van. "There's a town not too far back, I need to get some smokes anyway. Pin wake up and lets go."

Ignoring Deckard, Saben banged on the door again until the stained glass began to rattle.

"Wait." Heather put a hand on Saben's arm to stop. "I think I hear something."

It was the patter of footsteps, too light to be a person. Heather leaned forward, ear hovering near the door. Saben had an awful feeling in the pit of her bowel. This wasn't right.

There was a sudden furious barking, they spun round to find a rottweiler yanking hard at its chain. It's sharp teeth gnashing in their direction. Heather pulled Saben a hairs breadth from its snapping jaws and the girls collapsed across the deck.

"Holy shit."

The grand door swung open, a stout, stern unkempt middle aged man stood glaring down at them. "What do you want?" His voice oozed from between his corrupt yellow teeth.

"What the hell man? We're the band." Deckard shouted from the van door, his eyes on the slavering dog.

Heather helped Saben to her feet, mindful of the crazed dog whose teeth were bared and snapping at their heels.

"You're early." The man snapped and slammed the door shut.

"You've got to be fucking kidding." Saben muttered and kicked the door which only seemed to amplify the dog's distress.

"We'll come back later." Heather gripped that part of Saben's shoulder that seemed to pacify her. Her posture sagged and with a dramatic sigh she heaved her hard case into her arms and trudged toward the van.

"I've got a bad feeling about this place." Saben muttered, as if saying it would help the others to believe it.

Deckard rolled his eyes, stubbing the remains of his cig on the dash. "We're not ditching this show, girl. We need the cash."

"For what?" She challenged. They had once lived on twenty bucks with no place to stay and working dive bars in exchange for stale leftovers. She knew Deckard owed some bad men a lot of money and he was mixed up in al weird types of shit but that was not really her concern.

He met her eyes in the mirror and they stared one another down. Saben wasn't scared of Geoff or his seedy little world of drugs and star fuckers. Though she hated that he had seen her naked, had touched her so intimately that the memories still made her blush.

"Don't start this now." Pin Cushion said, fingers nervously drumming on the wheel.

"Let's get out of here." Deckard sighed eyes moving away from her reflection.

They drove into the small town of Woodbridge a few minutes later, the van felt as if it were ready to come apart. Saben gladly stepped onto the slush decorated side walk, kicking clumps of snow into the road.

"You want anything?" Pin asked before locking up the van.

Saben shook her head, already heading toward the Woodbridge Five and Ten, drawn by the glittering junk in the window. The soft tinkle of bells heralded her entrance. The store was empty, not even a clerk behind the counter.

"Hello?" No answer. With shrug she ambled around the place testing surfaces with her fingers coming away with thick grey crud on the tips.

She hated junk. Couldn't take it too far with you. This junk looked as if it had been here a long time. She passed into the back of the store, fascinated to find a different store altogether. The shelves housed neatly rowed jars, bottles, vials, amulets and baskets filled with herby looking things. It smelt earthy and the exotic stuffs left rainbow lights reflecting over the walls and floors.

"Great goddess, you scared me."

Saben spin around to see a girl seated behind a squat counter. The girl was rubbing dark brown hair out of her eyes, laughing to herself.

"Can I help?" She asked.

Saben shook her head no. "Just looking."

The girl was watching her closely. Too closely. It made Saben uncomfortable. "I'm not going to steal anything, if that's what you're worried about." Not that she wasn't prone to stealing, there just wasn't anything worth taking in this shit pit.

"Well thank the White Goddess for that because I'd have a time of it running after you."

It was then Saben saw the girl was in a wheelchair. "Sorry, I-"

"Don't worry about it." She manoeuvred herself in front of the counter. "Are you sure I can't help you?"

Saben walked out of the Five and Ten with a strange feeling of calm. It was something she hadn't felt since she had been with Baba Lucine, the house in the forest, though those memories were distant and blurred now.

The girl, Melusine had given her a gift as she made her excuses to leave and now Saben pressed the sprig of white heather to her chest. _Take it, just in case._

"You okay, Sabe?" Heather asked as she returned to the van, feet dragging, reluctant to leave.

She climbed back into the refuge of the van, squeezing herself between a stack and some guitar cases. She leant against the back of Pin Cushions seat. "It's getting dark."

How long had she been in the store?

They drove in silence, Saben's head still filled with the herby stench of the shop. The girl's intense eyes imprinted on the inside of her eyelids. They got to the club by nightfall and there was an unusual life and alien weirdness creeping around the old house. Lighting it up like a beacon in the wilderness.

"Not convinced this is the right place." Heather muttered as she unloaded her bass.

"Let's get this over with." Saben muttered.

Between the four of them they ferried their equipment inside. The stocky doorman that had greeted them earlier that day fluttered around them with a scowl, complaining about each step of the process.

As Saben liberated her mic and uncoiled it from it's sleeping position the a horrid little man approached her bearing his crooked badly stained teeth like weapons. "Haven't you finished yet"

She looked either side of her, for support from her band but Heather and Pin had their heads turned elsewhere. _Strange looking little man._

"Obviously you've never hosted a live band in this darling little shit hole." She said.

Deckard stepped in and placed a hand on his shoulder, the little man pulled away looking dismayed at Deckard's callused digits clamped on his threads. Deckard pulled back his hand and held it up in surrender. "It's cool, man."

"Just hurry up and start." He barked.

She had to do some vocal warm ups and test the mic, Geoff knew the routine, he'd been in and out of bands since he was fourteen and he was twenty-two now. Geoff laughed and put a heavy arm about Saben's shoulders. "Yeah man, no problem. We'll be ready, you just tug open the curtains and we'll give you one hell of a show."

"No one told us it was an acoustic set." Heather mumbled, looking up from tightening Pin's kit. "Am I on acid or have we not done a sound check yet?"

"You want perfect volume? I give it to you perfect." Saben watched the little man scurry off stage. He looked like a weasel or a little rat, a goddamn freak from Ripley's Believe It Or Not, human vermin dressed in small slacks, pin stripe shirt and waistcoat.

"Don't know why they needed us for entertainment with a little gem like him running around. The man is fucking freak show." She said.

"Certifiable." Heather agreed cradling her bass.

"Just pick up your mic and let's do it, girl." Deckard hissed.

Saben glared at Geoff as if she could pierce his heart with her stare.

"Don't say a thing, just sing." He thrust the mic into her open hand and she continued to glare as he adjusted the dials on his head, static wheezing through the cab, he turned the volume up little by little until the hum seemed to penetrate the inside of her mouth.

The curtains parted with a flourish.

Saben turned around slowly, almost dreading the sight of more of _them_. The people that came to the Black Iris: they were people who weren't quite right. They exude a menacing energy. Deckard nudged her and she stepped forward, turning on the mic and holding it to her lips.

"This is Life After Baba Lucine." She began as she always did and with the guitar, bass and drums pounding behind her she let loose a scream that was taken from the very depths of her being.

Half frightened she would be deafened by the feedback as the instruments broke out into a righteous down tuned cadence. They didn't, the little man was right, the volume was perfect. So perfect she was losing herself in the music again. The passion, her discontent, her frustration, her raw fury poured into growls so intense they should not be coming from a small girl.

That's when she saw him in the crowd. _Blue eyes_. And he was looking directly at her.

Saben's throat felt raw. Shredded. She had gagged and near passed out after the set. She had been sitting behind the musty curtain listening the beat of their voices, the ebb and flow of dark consciousness until she needed to piss.

The others were loading the van.

She crept through the house, using the secretive passages as the little man had said, wondering if the rickety house even had a concept of modern plumbing. She climbed up a staircase that creaked with infirmity, she had pulled up her sleeve to conceal her hand, using it to slide up the banister.

She pushed open the door and stuck her head inside. It was once a bedroom, some old furniture was draped with now dusty sheets. Its ancient breath stank of something rotten, like death. She covered her nose and gently closed the door behind her.

A shadow flittered between doorways, she heard the whisper of movement across the cracked and dusty tiles.

"Hello?" She called out, feeling instantly stupid at the sound of her own raspy voice. "Very fucking clever."

She pushed open the next door with less ceremony and walked inside. It was not the bathroom, maybe another bedroom though there was a distinct stench of burnt wood. It scraped the back of her throat and made her gag anew.

She spun round to go to the next room when she was stopped by a figure in the hall. He had his back to her, she knew it was a man from the broadness of his back. She reached out, grabbing his shoulder but he was already spinning around. She was speared by his eyes, she could see the heavens rolling through them, electric blue icy hotness.

"I know you." She said.

He seemed to sneer at her, eyes flicking to the heather she had pinned to her chest, before turning his back and moving elegantly down the stairs without having made a sound.

"Hey, don't walk away from me." She said clumsily half running after him except she tripped and fell hard to the ground, so hard she cracked one of those tiles and pain flared through her hand. She was bleeding.

She swore, gathering herself to a seated position. She stared at her hand, gripping her wrist, watching the blood gather in her hand, filling the cup of her palm. She was fascinated by the sight of her skin split in two like a mouth gabbling blood.

She picked herself up and made her way down the rickety stair case. A figure approached from behind a thick black curtain. She was all too conscious of her heartbeat hammering in her throat, the thick wells of blood pumping out of her hand.

"Who are you?" She asked the figure thinking it was the stranger, struggling to hear her own voice above her beating heart.

The normal sounds of the house invaded her consciousness when she saw it was Deckard. "We have to move now." Geoff hissed in her ear and grasped her hand. He dragged her out of the club quickly, away from the shadows and peculiar darkness of the old house.

"Start the fucking truck." He said to Pin Cushion, slamming a fist on the hood of the car for emphasis.

"Jesus, Geoff. Not the van."

He pushed Saben roughly inside and Heather helped her climb into the back before Geoff slammed the door behind him. Pearls of sweat beaded on his brow as he sat shivering in the passenger seat.

Saben looked out of the dark, distorted van window and saw a figure standing on the porch. Sound blossomed in her mind, screams and whispers woven together in the fabric of her psyche, vibrated through her ears. _I thought I told you... Shouldn't have come here…Deserve what's coming to you…No one to save you this time…drain…you…dry…_

It was the stranger, his unmistakable eyes glowing like liquid mercury, his mouth was stained with red, as red as the blood she had left on the tiles.


	4. Chapter 3

Three

July 1994

Something had changed since Sterback, Saben thought through a haze of drugs.

Her voice was husky from death growls, she regretted not learning how to breath. Throat cancer, polyps, staples and sarcomata loomed. Though she didn't want to live forever.

They were driving, had been for hours. The tour was over and there was no big bang, no celebration, just the instinct to flee the scene and the lingering feeling of trepidation. Things hadn't been right since Sterback.

Saben's hand was bandaged tight and itched like bitch.

"Stop that." Heather said imperiously.

When Heather had offered her pills earlier that night to help her sleep, she had devoured three (or four?) just for a moment of peace from her vivid dreams and burning throat.

Saben curled into a ball, turning her back on Heather's cold eyes. Thinking. She had never told anybody where she came from. Life After Baba Lucine,_ it's such a bluesy name for a heavy metal band_, they would say but it was important that they use the name for now, not forever. Not forever.

Corpulent Baba Lucine. The child snatcher. The pimp. Saben shivered as she half slept. That night was both vivid and distorted since she had seen the stranger in the crowd, he was like a phantom descending from a dream. Maybe. Maybe it was all a nightmare.

Why hadn't he changed? There were no wrinkles on his face, no lines telling a story of age or experience. Just his eyes. Eyes that held some of the vast mysteries of the universe or at least the answers to all questions she could possibly conceive to ask. Maybe she was just crazy: delirious from lack of sleep.

Heather's magic pills was slowly stealing away her rational mind, they were making her empty and invincible.

"You live in too many fantasies." Heather mumbled.

_Better than living in reality._

Saben had never been to school. But she did read, though she had barely been taught to read and write before she ran away. She was ravenous for literature and this fuelled her lyrics. You wouldn't think it to look at her, gutter punk slime trying to be tough, trying to survive.

Deckard had seen her first, already fucking her with his eyes as he lured her to his apartment after a rock show.

She was seduced by the offer of food and shelter and he didn't seem so bad compared to other things. He had played his acoustic guitar, singing softly off-key and she had joined in. She was singing to some half-remembered classic rock ballads she had first heard on Danny Somtow old bootleg cassettes.

The instinct came to her, to start screaming her words, inexplicable reams of poetry flowed from her. It was a gift she hadn't asked for but she was compelled to do it, exorcising demons with her throat, seeking vengeance through her words.

Deckard took her to a practise space, a loft in the warehouse district where there were good acoustics. Deckard had thrust a mic in her hand and told her to sing and she sang and she screamed and she had met Heather for the first time. _What about the other chick?_ Heather asked Deckard who shrugged eloquently.

Saben had known Pin Cushion from a ninth street shelter where she had stayed with a bunch of burnouts in NY. He had jammed with her a few times but his kit was held ransom at his ex-girlfriends place so he agreed to join Life After Baba Lucine if they'd pitch in for a new kit.

It had been the beginning of something with potential, it became poignantly clear when she spent her first few nights with Deckard that to make the band work she needed to detach herself from them all.

Though she loved them in secret spasms, she was never scared of them and rarely suspicious. She didn't have to fuck them. Just stand in front of them and their sparkling instruments put her lips to the mic and scream. There were no mysteries. No teeth. No electric blue cruelty.

She was almost fully asleep when the van pulled into the gas station.

They had been aiming for the desert for the past few days. Pin had a brother in Nevada who he said could put them up for a spell.

Saben woke up sluggishly, not able to shake the drug haze that now clung to the edges of her vision as well as her mind. She lifted her face to the puffy-eyed exhausted expressions of her makeshift family and felt sad.

Something had changed since Sterback. The last gig had robbed them of something and they all felt it even if not one of them could articulate.

"No more cash." Pin said and tapped the dashboard where the dial had flicked to 'empty'.

They all turned to Geoff who shook his head, no. He didn't have anything to spare.

Saben sighed and she and Heather crawled out of the van to stretch their limbs and survey the gas station. There was an out of service car wash attached to the side, the lights on the outside were dim, some bulbs broken or fractured and flickering.

She could see the silhouette of the clerk behind his counter, head bent over something on the desk. From this distant he looked young, not yet thirty, with skin the colour of cappuccino.

"I did it the last time." Heather said.

Saben cringed and she could feel her heartbeat through her wound.

*

His name was Kenny and he knew exactly what he wanted the instant he saw Saben enter the store. She didn't have to lean over the counter, offer her cleavage like human sacrifice upon his alter he was already hooked.

Underage arse was a thing of beauty and Kenny was the kind of guy that had a thing for little white and Latin chicks. She took a lollipop from the counter and stuck it in her cheek. His eyes flicked from her lips to her tits and then to her tongue.

"So how about you do me a favour and you look the other way?"

"Ain't no other way to look, sweetheart." Shaking his head, no.

She saw the place where his wedding band scarred his now swollen brown finger, he had hurried removed it when she came in. The gas station was deserted except for Kenny who dutifully watched over the rotting stock.

The rest of the band stayed in or around the van, Geoff was staring at Saben. If looks could kill…

Kenny lead her silently to the store room as he realised she's silently consented to do whatever he had on his mind and she had a feeling he had a lot on his mind. He didn't bother putting the "closed" sign in the window.

He was plain about what he wanted saying the wife didn't do it anymore not since the second of his three children came into the picture. He showed her a picture of his family. _Dumb bitch,_ she thought to the two dimensional smiling wife. _'Til death do us part…_his zipper was loud as it came undone.

"C'mon." He said impatiently, half in disbelief, this shit didn't just happen to Kenny. Saben was scoping for cameras hidden in corners before she sunk to her knees and spat out the sickly sweet cherry lollipop.

She reached for his open zipper, her fingertips were grazed on their way past the metal teeth. Kenny groaned and lurched forward, falling like a ton of bricks.

Geoff stood over him with a baseball bat the word 'peacemaker' crudely scrawled on the side. She remembered when he had stolen it from a bar in Boston. There was bright blood on the wood. It reminded her of the stranger's ruby lips, his wild blue eyes with the heavens rolling through them.

"Jesus, Sabe." Geoff is panting as he dropped the tip of the bat to the ground to use as a crutch. _Is this all you are? Is this all you want to be? _A terrible feeling of sadness and shame, started in a slow burn of tears behind her cheeks.

Saben got to her feet staring at Kenny's prone figure, a pile at her feet. Se felt light headed probably from Heather's drugs. "You okay?" Geoff asked belatedly.

She nodded.

"That was close."

She grunted in agreement. She felt vaguely sorry for Kenny, now that he was unconscious, he was defenceless, an easy target for anyone or anything.

"Let's go." Geoff pulled her back to the van where Pin was jumping back in the driver's seat, his teeth gritted obviously unhappy with what had just happened inside. He was too soft hearted and different from the others because of it.

Saben resumed her place, curled up between Heather feet and Deckard's soft guitar case. She made a pillow of it as the van thrummed to life beneath her, lulling her into a new dreamless sleep.


	5. Chapter 4

Four

August 1994

Life After Baba Lucine was rotting.

It had started after that strange little tour of the Black Iris', Saben was thinking as she sat with her face to the wall. Her hand was poised, her wrist bent at an odd angle, ready to scribble words, tease out lines of poetry and smear new melodies on the walls.

She had become withdrawn, she could feel herself recede from the world, sucked into the vortex of her own mind which was a jumble of memories. She barely went out. They had played a handful of gigs since Sterback but the magic had faded now it spilt on the walls of the one room apartment.

The seams of their little family were coming undone.

It had started with Deckard. Thinking of Geoff Deckard made her jaw tighten with frustration and anger. He had begun to act so strangely when they moved into the city and she had noticed his sly little ways.

He wore long sleeves even in the worst of the desert heat, the circles beneath his eyes deepened, the delicate skin turning shades of purple. His skin had grown unnaturally pale and he was given over to sweats and shakes though he didn't take any drug that she knew of.

He slept all day, usually curled up in the darkest corner behind their beaten up couch. When he was awake he would take every opportunity to snap at whoever was closest. Things started to go missing, at first it was the small stuff, replaceable stuff and then it was his guitar and it all became dismally clear.

Heather had taken a job as a waitress in a nearby diner, she made big tips with the tourists and moonlighted at open mic nights, singing throaty Patti Smith covers. Pin Cushion was temping for some local hardcore band. He slept at his brother's place, finding it impossible in the cramped little one room apartment with the rest of them.

_Tough shit_. It was just the way things were. She had known she only ever had herself to rely upon.

As days bled seamlessly together the apartment deteriorated around her. It was only until she ran out of paper she chose to use the walls.

"What does this all mean?" Deckard shouted.

"You're tripping." Saben replied softly as she continued her mad scrawl, unravelling mysteries through her lyrics.

"This place needs a lick of paint." He said kicking over a bucket of black emulsion that oozed across the carpet like toxic blood.

She was on her knees, face to the wall wearing only underwear, having run out of clean clothes days ago. The paint was cold as it smeared her skin and she flinched.

"Fuck you Deckard."

The apartment seemed to crackle with energy and Saben knew as Deckard loomed above her that he was ready to hit her or worse. His anger was so fierce it pressed upon her like a body.

His cell phone rang, distracting him, he picked it up and few words were spoken. She barely had time to look at him before he slammed the door behind him on his way out.

That was the end of the band.

She stood in the empty apartment, the beaten up couch they had dragged from an alleyway, the empty take out trays rotting in all four corners, a stinking blanket that anyone of them would crawl under to sleep.

She put her hands to the black paint and smeared the walls with it, hiding her words and putting her thoughts back into unfathomable black mysteries. She worked until every inch of the apartment was covered and night turned into day.

She washed as much paint off her hands as possible before pulling on one of Pin Cushion's clean tees and her old worn out motorcycle boots. She picked up her hard guitar case, the weight of the guitar felt good in her arm and this was all she would be taking with her.

She knew she couldn't go back. In effect she had written her goodbyes on the walls and knew they'd get the message. Even as she thought that she sweltered beneath the searing heat of the desert.

Saben hated the desert.

She folded arms in front of her chest as she walked aimlessly. Before long she was on the strip, her lips dried from the sun and her pink hair turned into cotton candy. She walked with the tourists and couldn't muster the energy to confront the strange looks.

It took her a while to realise she was being followed.

She lead the stalker into an empty side road, parked cars and hotel windows bearing witness to them She turned to face the stranger to find a girl. She was a waif, only slightly more kempt than Saben but dirtier somehow.

Her hair was dark but eyes were darker, they seemed to sparkle with an inner light that was not altogether natural. Her voice, though, was light and chirpy, different to what it should have been. "You're her, aren't you? Are you the ver-human in that band? The singer?"

"Not anymore." Saben mumbled, disturbed by the girl's phrasing. She took her last cigarette and put it to her lips. She didn't have a light but the girl stepped forward flicking her fingers to produce a flame. Saben exhaled a shaky halo of smoke. She muttered a thank you before turning and walking away.

"Wait." The girl ran after her. "I saw you at the Black Iris."

"Which one?"

"Are you alone?" The girl's tone changed.

"I don't want company if that's what you're asking." Saben paused glancing at her cigarette. "I'm not looking for company, I haven't got any money…or…anything."

She considered smacking the girl with her guitar, the weight of it dragging on her arm. Saben was only vaguely wary about being mugged and beaten, but with only the guitar to steal the kid wouldn't get far hawking it in the condition it was in.

The raspy, primal part of her mind told her to get as far away as she could from the girl because she was not a girl at all she only looked like a girl.

The girl smiled as if reading her thoughts and there was a lot to see in that smile. Something alien, something old and terrifying and she had too many teeth, her eyes became too bright and large, like saucers reflecting both the sun and moon. Hypnotising.

Saben shook her head trying to clear her mind of a sudden encroaching sluggishness. Her fingers became numb and she dropped the cig and almost let go of her guitar. She turned on her heels once again to walk away but the girl still followed.

Saben ducked into the first store she found. It was a side entrance, a dingy little hole with spray paint scarring the front. The bells seemed to squeal as if they understood her urgency. A young man sat behind the counter, blue eyes on her, suspicious of her. "Can I help you?" He asked mildly irritated.

She had one eye on the door, waiting for the girl to stride in and drag her out. Her flesh was crawling with wild thoughts of grave dirt and claws, the wild eyes of the creatures in the Black Iris, Deckard's pale and purpling skin.

She slipped between two aisles, surrounded by pungent herbs. She began to get lost amongst the clutter, crouching by some wicker baskets, the waft of lavender flooded her sense and she doubled over to sneeze.

"What do you want?" The clerk asked, already out of his seat, moving toward her through the aisles.

She was about to tell him, lips poised to spill the grief of being set upon by what she was almost convinced was a demon but then decided against it. "Never mind."

He stared at her intently as if waiting for her to say more, when it was evident she wasn't he touched her wrist, pressing a folded piece of paper into her open palm. "You better take my number." He said softly. "Just in case."

She left the shop almost more panicked than when she first entered.

The paper still clutched tightly in one hand, the stench of the cruddy shop stuffed up her nostrils like the taste of magic mushrooms on the back of her tongue.

She wandered in circles until she was satisfied she was once again alone. The sun was going down and she had the stomach churning kind of hunger that drove her to the familiar sight of the Black Bear Diner.

She slipped into a stool with a view into the kitchen and propped her guitar beside her. She knew the cook and owner, Ronnie Orson, he owned a club a little down the way and Life After Baba Lucine had played a set there once and once had been enough for Ronnie. He said he'd never invite them back but they could come for a drink at the bar.

He sent a plate of oily fries her way.

"Rough day?" He asked throwing his greasy kitchen towel over one shoulder.

She stared down at her stained hands, the crumpled paper in her palm. "Maybe the best day of my life."

He smiled. She stared at his teeth, yellow with cigarette stains but not sharp though not like the girl's. She shook her head, it ached with too many thoughts and too many possibilities.

She sat in the Black Bear for a long time, so long when she looked up from staring at her hands it was night time again and the fries had wilted in the basket in front of her. She wondered if Deckard had gone back to the apartment, she wondered what he'd say when he saw the place, she wondered if he'd even care.

There was still a small lingering part of her, that she hated, the part that missed being with Deckard or with anybody. Instead of being stuck with the phantom inside her head, blue eyes and cool fingertips. The ghostly romance so different from the awkward, rough and sticky fling with Deckard.

She squeezed the piece of paper tightly in her palm and then slipped it in her bra as she dragged herself out of the diner feeling both sick and tired and lost.

She couldn't wander aimlessly now with the sun down and the darkness spreading over the city and the gaudy lights of the bars, clubs and casinos rising to defy the night. She went to a place she could curl up for the night, a slim alleyway she knew she could bed down in. It could get terribly cold at night and she had nothing but the oversized tee that served as a dress and her guitar case to use as a pillow.

Sometimes these places were the safest she knew. Places people didn't want to go: into the dark, the dirty, the places built on human filth and wasted lives. Places only junkies and the desperate would go. She sunk down in alley dirt orphaned all over again. With her head pressed to her knees she knew she had come to a point where she just didn't care and she fell into an uneasy asleep.

Saben came awake with a sudden jolt to find the dark eyed street girl staring down at her. She was sneering, revealing those awful sharp teeth that Saben had since convinced herself was imagination. Saben screamed.

"For once why can't they stop screaming in my ear hole?" The girl mumbled to herself whilst pinning Saben down with incredible strength.

"What the fuck are you?" She stammered slipping out of the girl's claws and sliding back through the dust and dirt until her back hit the wall and there was no where further to go.

The girl laughed incredulously. "Oh please. Please don't ask me that of all questions. What am I? What are you? What is the meaning of this all?"

Saben stared dumfounded.

The girl leant over her and she felt the same sensation when Deckard had stood over her, the searing hot feeling of imminent violence and then the certain knowledge that she was going to die. The girl's head whipped up and she hissed, a reptilian, chilling sound.

Someone stood at the mouth of the alley. Saben saw the distorted silhouette before she was released by the girl and landed unceremoniously in the dirt.

The girl lay herself in the dirt in genuflect. "I'm sorry, I didn't know. I didn't know she was yours."

The figure didn't speak but there seemed to be a silent conversation because the expression flittering across the girl's face was very animated. The girl stood. "Of course, my Lord. Forgive me. Please forgive me." She bowed and scraped until she disappeared from sight.

Saben shakily got to her feet, she was more terrified now than she was of the girl's predator teeth inching toward her gullet. The figure began to approach. She couldn't move back any further and she was already pressed hard against the wall. She was trapped.

She felt the shadow fall over her and she instantly lost her breath. She closed her eyes listening to the thundering of her own heart. A whisper blossomed in her mind. It told her to sleep. Peaceful images passed behind her eyes and the voice persisted.

She was picked up off her feet.

"But Abberline, I'm not sleepy." She said in a little girl voice.

"Sleep." He said.

She gave in and slept.


	6. Chapter 5

Five

August 1994

Saben rose from a feeling of profound, unassailable peace to the cruel sensation of cold metal squeezing her wrist. Her eyes opened a slim crack, unwelcome daylight invading her senses and her arid tongue sprung to life, lolling like a lazy beast in her dry mouth.

She opened her eyes, blinking slowly to clear her vision thought the delicate skin of her eyelids ached deeply with the effort.

When she was able to focus her vision she found her wrist handcuffed to a pole that propped up a thick slab of marble.

She felt dizzy, light and coldness rattling her body until she acclimatised to her imprisonment.

It was a nice apartment, an expensive collection of ultra modern furniture, leathers, glass, granite and marble. Not kitschy ornaments to brighten the place just the almost sociopathic clinical taste of an absent owner. She had never been in an apartment this nice before.

The windows had been tinted so the full force of the sun could not fully invade the interior. She must have been high up because no leafy tree tops penetrated the view through the expansive windows.

Her nostrils clogged with dried snot and itched. She could not muster the strength to raise her free hand to her face though she felt as if her brain were leaking from her right ear.

"She's awake." A woman's silky voice emanated from beyond her vision.

Saben tried to speak but only managed a raspy kind of gurgle.

"She must be hungry or thirsty or maybe just plain stupid." The woman continued.

"Celsia." The familiar voice admonished.

"She's resistant, Abberline."

"I know."

Saben turned toward both the woman Celsia and Abberline a little distance away, the woman was reclining on one of the couches staring at her with a sly smile whilst Abberline stood at a greater distance staring down at her.

They gleamed like perfect statuettes of modern gods, a couple plucked from a sophisticated high fashion magazine.

"Clean her up before you eat her. She stinks." Celsia said.

Saben recoiled, insulted by Celsia's calmly stated words and then slowly the panic set in at the thought of being eaten. Cannibals sprung to mind, devil worshipping Illuminati, absorbing immortality, power, strength through human sacrifice. Human flesh sizzling in frying pans and incomplete corpses collapsed in bright white bathtubs stained in brilliant red blood.

In all her imaging she failed to notice Celsia move and now found her suddenly pacing in front of her, immaculate black suit and pencil skirt not ruffling an inch, tall black heels not even making a sound on the marble floors.

Saben was scared, the proximity of the strange cold woman made her heart thud through her chest and make her tongue swell. She could have screamed but her throat was too tight to form any real sound.

Celsia's fingertips hovered beneath her chin to raise her face for inspection.

"Simply awful." She murmured.

"Enough." Abberline appeared beside her in a blink and gripped Celsia's hand tightly. "Get out."

Celsia whipped up like a snake, glaring at Abberline and his pale fingers about her wrist. There seemed to be a silent exchange and eventually obeyed. She cast Saben a last long look before closing the door softly behind her.

Abberline stared at the closed door for a long time before he turned to look at Saben. "Remember me, sweetheart?"

She shook her head, no. She refused to look at him too closely but her insides were twisting in knots and she was indescribably afraid.

"Then how did you know my name?"

"I don't." She managed to say before exploding into a fit of coughs and hacks and bile and spit clung to her chin and dribbled onto her dusty shirt.

Abberline fetched a glass of water, placing the cool glass to her lips and tipping it down her throat. She took hold of the glass and guzzled the water, Abberline pulled back his hand to avoid touching her.

"You said it back there in the alley." He continued in a cool voice.

"I did?" Her voice was still hoarse.

He took a handful of her t-shirt in his hand, twisting the fabric in his fist and pulling her up to face him fully. "Don't play dumb with me, girl."

His breath was warm on her face and he smelt clean, different from what she was used to. Different from the staleness of cigarettes and beer. She went passive in his grasp, sagging until he released her and she fell back to the floor, her bones creaking stiff and exhausted.

"It's interesting." He said with his back to her.

"Let me go." She whispered.

He glanced at her from behind his shoulder. "Why would I do that?" Something about the angle of his face, the tone, it brought back vivid memories, and things she hadn't thought about in a long time.

She was small again, cringing, biting her tongue, tasting dull copper blood and she was not to speak unless spoken to or else suffer a stinging hot slap the threat of more violence. The stench of urine and shivering child flesh. Hands beneath the bed sheets.

"Saben Frost." He said her name as if considering the weight of it.

Her eyes were open wide whilst her thoughts raced. She was dragged into an alleyway, a grotesque girl looming over her with too many teeth, alien eyes. She had been kidnapped, the man was a serial killer, a cult leader, a cannibal. He was going to eat her.

Realisation came in a terrible rush. "Oh my, God," she whispered.

He turned to face her slowly.

She remembered his face. She remembered his eyes, electric blue danger.

Without knowing why she found herself reaching out, reaching toward his passive hand, fingertips brushed his skin and the world exploded behind her eyes. A rush of information bombarded her all at once.

Abberline was not his real name, he had _chosen_ it in 1929, just had he had chosen many names before it. His real name was rarely used, it was a powerful name in the right circles and only few knew it. She knew it. _Cebren_.

His true age pressed upon the inside of her skull, something fierce and incomprehensible. He was far older than he looked though he appeared no more than twenty-five, when he _chose_ to stop ageing.

He was born a drinker of human blood, squalling from the womb to suck on a bitten finger, greedy mouth chewing on his mother's breast. He was a killer, the woman Celsia was like him too.

He worked for the Council, bound to them by blood, oaths and other things. He hated humankind, it was the edict of his people that had become a law unto a nation. Other obscure things flashed before her, blood on battlefields and alters of forgotten nations and offerings to forgotten gods.

The overwhelming sense of him, the cold electric blue cruelty of his soul disguising his tender underbelly. There were things that seeped into those soft parts, weakened spots that felt beautiful to her invisible touch.

She saw the memory of her face in his mind, first as a child and she gleamed in his memories, pretty in her defiance, the phantom scent of wild magic and sunshine in her hair, that also radiating from her skin. It was only a small part of why he loved her.

The radiance and mysteries that veiled her as a child were only amplified now. The defiance still shone in her eyes, the wilful set of her mouth, more exotic now with her nimbus of pink hair and tattooed skin.

He didn't see her stiff and greasy from days of being in the dirt, days without a wash, black paint and over sized clothes. He didn't recoil from her like Celsia had.

She came out of the madness shuddering, gagging, straining against her bondage, her wrists was rubbed red raw and the skin was delicate enough to break and bleed. _He's seen inside me _too, she thought with terror.

Abberline was collapsed on the other side of the room, he was glowering at her but his skin had become the true pallor of a dead thing. He looked at her as if hated her, as if she were something grotesque. She knew he hated magic and she knew he thought she had ensorcelled him.

"Let me go?" She asked softly.

He couldn't speak. He looked mortified. Violated. He picked himself up, trying to smooth the wrinkles from his suit before walking away. Just the sight of his back turned on her made a sudden and terrible emptiness open in the pit of her stomach.

"Wait." She said in a soft a child-like voice.

He turned to look at her whilst she stared at him, forgetting everything she wanted to say.

He was suddenly in front of her, one moment he was on the other side of the room and the next so close to her face she could taste him. "Why does it hurt when I touch you?" She could think of anything else to ask or say.

She had many questions, she knew many things. She couldn't comprehend how nor why. How did she know his mother had been a singer?

He looked at her in silent distress, it showed in his electric-kissed eyes. His lips were pursed and stubborn, it was a look that meant he could kill.

He was so warm, no, not cold at all, not even a little, her eyelids began to droop becoming dizzy from the air they shared, the energy that sizzled between them. She made a small noise before he darted forward and pressed his lips to hers.

There was no explosion just the intense shimmering of a chord that led from her into him and back again.

*

Saben woke with a start, coughing and hacking and dry gagging her mind swamped with a sick feeling. When the fit subsided she looked sluggishly about her, she was in the all too familiar apartment one hand cuffed to the pole holding up the marble surface. She was completely alone. The place was dark. Empty. _It's just a nightmare._


	7. Chapter 6

Six

December 1994

Saben turned, half-smothered by the cool side of the pillow, to study Abberline's profile. His skin shone in the darkness, lit by a preternatural light that made him more enticing than he ought to be. It deceived her into thinking he was incredibly good looking, if you liked the fine boned feminine look, boyishly smooth chin and plump lips that would never wither. So different from the men she had known, so different from the sweat, spit and grunting.

She watched him sleep, traced the network of purple veins beneath the delicate skin of his eyelids with her eyes. She used to imagine his face, his hair, his whole being surrounding her, inside her when she was alone at night.

She had thought he was a dream. She was living in a dream.

How else could she knew that he never used to sleep when he was young. He had grown up on a remote island south of a great archipelago in what was soon to be called the Aegean Sea. Before it was claimed by tribes of Greeks it belonged to another tribe. It was an island populated by exotic creatures called the Night People. Though they were not known as such back then.

His People were once called the Nation. A scourge upon the face of the earth though they abided in peace to rules more strict than most.

Through his memories she had seen people change the shape of their skin and glitter with wild magic. They were all beautiful and fierce and a force to be reckoned with but those days had passed but the echoes of pain and blood of that long ago past resonated down the cord that bound them.

The People were different to what they had become. He was different now too. Night Lord. Responsible. Head of a House of the Night.

In this place she was made of glass, he could see through her, every dirty little sin, every flicker of emotion that she had endured for under two decades. She knew he liked to hear her sing. He liked the look of her on stage, prowling like a goddess.

She came to enjoy the sight of herself in his eyes: an idealised, glittering sight, something more than human. But it was just an illusion, she was human and suffered the flaws of all humankind. Humankind whom he hated as a matter of principal.

She was completely at his mercy, defenceless against his great strength, his incredible speed. He was a vampire. She couldn't fathom what this meant, she caught glimpses and flashes but she didn't truly know. He was born this way.

In the time that had passed she had somehow become completely his, bound to him through the strange constantly vibrating cord that connected their souls. Sometimes she could see it, from the periphery of her vision, a silvery glow reaching from her solar plexus to his.

"Stop staring at me." he said, his eyes remained closed.

It still hurt to touch him. If she wasn't expecting it, it could sting like the slice of a knife multiplying up her arm. Other times it was a pleasant simmering, the subtle build up of an all consuming orgasm.

She rose from the bed, setting bare feet on the icy floor and stretched, luxuriating in the limited freedom she now had. Her wrist was still red raw from where she had been cuffed. Abberline still didn't trust her not to flee and she didn't blame him, she would run given half a chance.

Claustrophobia was setting in, isolated from the vast world in Abberline's glass house. When he left the apartment he would cuff her wrist to the counter and she would resume her position on the marble floor.

She stared out at the planes of the desert. The city glistening like a distant kaleidoscopic mirage. She hated the desert.

She had been away from her life for so long she could almost forget who she really was, what she was before Abberline had abducted her. She was rubber soles on concrete, marching up and down a stage, sweat on her face, heart racing in her chest and not from fear but anger and exhiliration.

The thought of Abberline diffused this anger. The anger that had sustained her for so damn long. She was afraid and devastated, no amount of distance could tear her away from a need for Abberline. She hadn't thought she'd needed anyone before.

Even as she thought it he was suddenly beside her, staring down at her, scrutinizing her as he often did. She continued her vigil over the desert.

They didn't even like each other, she knew he hated that she swore too much and smoked too much and drank too much. She knew that he would kill her one day, she knew it was inevitable because she was dangerous, because he had feelings that were terribly close to true love.

He had told her often that if anyone knew she existed they may both die. Saben didn't understand any of it.

He reached out but didn't touch her, pale fingertips hovering near her shoulder but she could feel the phantom of his touch. Held her breath as if she could will him to touch her.

"You feel it too." He said softly.

"Time's running out." She said quickly cutting off any confessions he may have made, and turned to face him. "I won't tell, you know?"

His expression became fierce, angry and he stepped close, she was suffocated by his very presence. He sighed and stepped back, shaking his head slowly from side to side.

She closed her eyes tight and knew she was going to die. "It still hurts when I touch you." She whispered, hating herself for not having something smart to say.

She would be given over to his authorities and she would die. Better this way than the alternative, she supposed as his blue eyes filled her vision, becoming as broad as the sky. This world of theirs was not real. A dream…a nightmare…

_The world isn't real if I'm not with you. _Unable to stop her thoughts. _There is no music…there is no future…there's nothing….I-_

There was a knock at the door.

Abberline took a full step away from Saben as Celsia Verain came in.

Celsia looked from Abberline to Saben and back again and Saben knew it was time. Her shoulders sagged and Abberline strode away, slamming the bedroom door between them. That was their goodbye.

Celsia had carried in Saben's guitar case and she pushed a pungent pile of old clothes into Saben's arms. "Quickly."

Saben pulled on the clothes she had worn more than a month ago, smeared with alley grim and road dust. It was like slipping into an old skin. Celsia watched all the while.

When she was done, Celsia clasped her hand drew her to sit beside her on the couch. "I think it would have been interesting." Celsia said with an icy smile.

"What?" Saben asked distracted by Abberline's presence thrumming behind the bedroom door.

"To take you, to Turn you, to become…friends." The word 'friend' did not sit well on the vampire's tongue.

"Shut up." She said from between her teeth. This was hard enough.

Couldn't comprehend a world without Abberline, his skin, his scent, his touch, his mesmerising eyes. Couldn't comprehend even the phantom of him not there to greet her when she closed her eyes, or when the honey hot feeling in her loins crested.

The woman smiled and the world became her cruel blue eyes and she knew Celsia was glad Saben would not be around anymore.

It was transcendental rape. Celsia tore the memories brutally from her mind, some came away easily, things she'd rather forget but others were deeper rooted in her mangled psyche, some had to be pulled. Saben was screaming, she 'd already slid from the chair to the ground, convulsing as Celsia performed her metaphysical butchery.

Everything inside Saben was resisting. The silver illumination of the cord that bound her to the vampire Abberline was slowly choking her until she fell unconscious.

Saben woke with a scream dying on her lips. She was slumped on the sidewalk, covered in desert dust, collapsed against a railing that lead to a car park of some hotel. Her guitar case was somewhere nearby and she grasped the handle and dragged it toward her.

She felt immediately confused, near-frightened, was someone following her? She looked down at her hands, her wrists, as if she should remember something or had she forgotten something. She climbed to her feet, taking odd steps, testing her legs.

She had been trying to get away. She tugged on her t-shirt, thick crusts of black paint had matted into the fabric.

She closed her eyes, momentarily dizzy, a vision of gnashing predator teeth, the jumbled sounds of keening and cackling made her sway. Panic had fully set in and she was gasping for breath, she was running.

She ran trying to escape the phantoms of her mind, she missed a beat and tripped, flinging out her arms to protect her face from the impact. The shock and sight of skin broken and bleeding made her calm.

Silent tears marked her face but she was too numb to feel the pain.

She pulled a small crumpled piece of paper out of her bra. She must have stashed it there when she had been scared out of that old herb store. Hadn't that been only a few hours ago? Her hands were shaking as she peeled open the paper.

She collected herself together and walked slowly toward the nearest pay phone, she huddled inside the booth, looking stared feverishly through the distorted Plexiglas looking for fiends and devils.

She picked up the clammy plastic receiver, nervously punching in the numbers that were barely readable through the creases of the paper.

"Hello?"

There was a pause.

"Hi. I know this sounds crazy but…" She pressed her forehead against the cold metal of the phone box. "I think someone's trying to kill me."


	8. Chapter 7

Seven

February 1995

Saben Mariley Frost often walked around with a furrowed brow as if there were something she was trying to remember or some problem she were trying figure out, impossible arithmetic or complex equation she was trying to solve.

She lived in a crumbling tenement, stuck, stranded in Vegas, trapped in the desert she hated. "It's the best we could do on such short notice." The clerk had told her at the housing office; it was better than sleeping on the streets, she supposed.

When she had first stepped inside door 52 she had found crisp clean bed linen folded and placed on the floor, a sunken mattress in one corner and a small black and white television in the other.

She hawked a bracelet she had found for a cheap stereo that couldn't pick up any stations but had a decent tape deck. She had picked up a few tapes too, mostly Pantera and ACDC bootlegs. She set her guitar case in a corner of the room.

The first night she found she lived beneath volatile lovers, shouts, screams and ominous thuds echoed constantly through the midnight hours. Saben would crank up the volume on the stereo and crouch on her mattress focusing on the warbling cassette, Phil Anselmo shouting above all other noise and sometimes she screamed along to it and other sometimes she buried her face in a pillow and filled herself with the stench of her greasy hair.

These things were small in comparison to her discovery of the Night World.

She had replaced the phone on its cradle that December and stumbled away from the phone box and in the vague direction of the herb store she had come across by accident.

She had been intercepted on rout, a suited man had grasped her hard by the arm and guided her to a silver Sedan and they drove for what seemed like hours.

For countless days she had endured questioning and prodding, people with large, shining, unnatural eyes: kin to the scores of creepy kids that had frequented the Black Iris clubs. They grilled her for hours on end and she slept little, tossing and turning and shivering with confusion and frustration. How had she found out? They wanted to know.

She remembered being chased, a skinny girl glaring down at her with eyes that glowed like the sun and moon. Saben must have passed out, must have escaped somehow, must have blocked it out because all she could remember was the solid feel of greasy plastic in her hand as she phoned the witch, Tobias.

With the roiling combination of her paranoia, symptoms of shock and panic they divined that they could not simply release back into society. She had no family or friends. They decided to keep her, put her in some housing so they could keep an eye on her, keep her alive, and figure her out.

She had been assigned a therapist, Celeste Morgan. The woman was a witch, not that Saben truly understood what this was, she looked perfectly normal. Saben avoided appointments, she didn't need that shit, she had her music, her battered cassette deck and change for new bootlegs and of course her Les Paul sitting safe in her guitar case propped in the corner.

She hadn't seen the boy Tobias or his magic shop since though she had been told it wasn't far from where she now lived. Apparently he was quite high up a social scale that she was only beginning to understand, the scale of which, as usual, she found herself near the bottom echelons.

She walked out of her apartment block, lacerated boots splattered with paint and a jumper too many sizes too big, it hung on her like a dress. She had a few dollars stuffed in her bra to buy some pink hair dye or maybe something to eat, she didn't have enough money for both.

She chose hair dye. Clutching the paper bag close to her she headed back home. No sense in hanging out on the streets not with Them about. Her eyes moved slyly either side of her, trying to identify the subtle differences that marked this persons steps or that persons' eyes.

Whilst straining to see either side of her she knocked into someone, she muttered a quick "sorry," and continued on.

"Hi. Yeah. Aren't you -"

She paused to look back and saw Tobias. It had been months and she had only had one encounter but he was unmistakeable, he pushed up sunglasses on top of his hair. Copper brown curls and cornflower blue eyes…blue eyes…_Think of the devil_… "You."

He looked her up and down taking in the sight of her, dishevelled. "How are you?"

She felt awkward, as if she'd been placed under a large spy glass. Utterly exposed. "Okay." She spoke through clenched teeth. It was Tobias that had landed her in this mess, took her away from her life…a life she couldn't remember. Now she was stuck, trapped in the goddamn desert.

"You look…healthy. Where are you headed?"

She pointed into the distance, there was a high rise a couple of blocks down.

"Do you want a ride?"

He looked at her as if she were something small and precious, though she was shorter than him, _I'm not a kid_, she wanted to say, he must have been two, maybe three years older than her. "I'd rather walk." She replied instead.

She began to walk, forcing her hands to swing by her sides and not grasp at her unkempt hair or baggy jumper. It took her several minutes to realise he was following her. He fell into step beside her but didn't bother to speak.

He followed her into the building, catching the door, running up the staircase to her front door. She didn't want him to come in, hadn't expected him to come this far. He put a hand on the door as she tried to slip inside, he forced it open and strode into the room.

He stopped short, a look of disgust, pity, confusion flashed across his handsome face before he placed his sunglasses back over his eyes.

"Seen what you wanted to see?" She asked placing her paper bag on a windowsill, perched on the edge, her frame silhouetted against the midday sun.

Silence filled the space between them, she couldn't see his eyes but could imagine them filled with scorn and something else. Screaming erupted from above and he saw her cringe at the shrill tones of an argument.

"Look. Sabrina, is it?"

"Saben." She corrected.

He stared at her, head turning to one side as if considering and her brows drew together as it triggered the phantom of a memory beyond her reach.

"Right, of course. Saben." He pronounced her name slowly, as if testing the syllables. "I was thinking, I need some help at the shop, it's been a one man show lately and I find myself needing a little bit of company. Come over at seven." He flinched when he heard a thud echo from above his head.

Her eyes flew to the ceiling where a slim crack spider webbed across the plaster.

When she looked back, Tobias had sealed the door between them.

She parted two stems of the dusty blind and waited for Tobias' silhouette walk across the street and walk back in the direction of his ride. When her head hit the pillow that night she didn't get a wink of sleep.

The closed sign was displayed in crude letters at the front of the store that looked as if it were already derelict inhabited by leftover junk, and crawling vermin set up their nests in the nooks and crannies.

She knocked on some part of the door and heard a creaking that made her take a generous step back lest anything come crumbling down at her feet or on her head.

"I'm out back." A voice erupted.

A dishevelled Tobias in ripped jeans and stained T-shirt was boarding up a back window where cracked shards were bared like teeth of a great monster. "Punks." He explained as he kicked through the broken glass at his feet.

She smiled sarcastically but he didn't seem to notice.

"You ready for work?" He walked toward her rubbing his hands together.

She looked at the back alley, in as poor state as the front and couldn't remember the insides or imagine it being a functional store. Mustn't make too much money, the punks probably thought it was a squat shack for them to spend a few nights out of the desert dust. She offered a shrug.

"That's the attitude." He said and patted her head as he walked past.

Anger infused her limbs and a terrible ache crept into her shoulders. This was going to be a long day.

He had her sweeping the floor as he disappeared for hours.

No one came in that day, if the closed sign didn't scare them off then the general malaise of trash and gutter rats would be enough to put anyone off. Once she glanced up and saw someone peer in through the window, as their eyes met the person detached themselves and jogged away.

She was sneezing as she kicked up wave after wave of dust with the broom. Billions upon billions of cells collected in corners speaking of population, maybe once it had been a bustling affair, a hit, a gem but now the store was falling into disrepair. Neglected.

She had put headphones on, plugged into a lifted disc man. She had turned the volume up once she was convinced she would not be disturbed. She began to hum and then sing along.

She paused in sweeping to straighten her back and found Tobias standing between two aisles, mouthing something she couldn't make out.

"What?" She pulled out one earphone.

"I didn't know you could sing." He said.

"Well that's not a surprise. You don't know anything about me."

"That's true." He was staring at her intensely and she turned her head away half heartedly sweeping at one corner. He slipped on his jacket. "I have to go and run some errands, I'll be back before closing time."

Saben glanced through the greasy window and saw a gorgeous blond girl leaning on a red sports car. She looked him up and down, dressed semi-formal, smelling nice and handsome face glowing and knew he had no notion of coming back that night.

"Sure." She murmured.

He left through the front, the bells jingling singing to his exit. She took the time to poke around the jars, vials and bric a brac, trying to twist the words of the labels around her tongue and fathom this concoction or that. She grew bored quickly.

She went to the antique cash register toying with the thoughts of cracking it open but her conscious was not silent as her fingers hovered over the pad.

She didn't know how to work the cash register, anyhow and it would be thoroughly useless if someone came in to actually buy something. She noticed the items weren't priced and there was no price list behind the counter. She was babysitting.

She walked to the back of the store and peered behind the beaded curtain, she had come through a narrow hallway but she knew the store led further back to a proper house. There must have been two or three bedrooms. She could explore, maybe pick something up to make a little money…

She felt guilty at the thought. She would be paid though, she hoped, for her few hours of babysitting. That would be a good thing to report back to the suits at Day Break, evidence of her being normal, functional. The thought of it was nice.

She sat behind the counter alone for so long she lay her head on the counter and fell asleep for the first time in a long time, she fell into a peaceful sleep.


	9. Chapter 8

Eight

May 1995

Through the crackling sounds of Pantera, Saben was at once daydreaming, cigarette smoke and incense rolling through her mind, the feel of a microphone scratching her mouth, her breath amplified in the dark.

Her memories came back, sluggish, mass of images, names, tastes, smells. She remembered Geoff Deckard, his fingers in the dark, pulling, prodding, calluses scratching her soft parts. She had been a singer, remembered the intimate embrace of an anorexic mic stand.

Celeste Morgan had reassured her these memories were normal, that they would return to her often now and more perhaps in overpowering extremes.

She remembered other things too, dark things, things she'd rather not remember but there was still that one thing that eluded her, the thing that brought a frown to her sweetheart lips.

As she sat behind the antique register, fingers stroking the counter, her mind and fingers itched to express, to write, to splay her phantoms on a page, a wall, through her throat.

She didn't hear the bells tinkle or sense someone walked into the store. Saben didn't look up for moments but when she did the breath was stolen from her lungs. The most beautiful woman she had ever laid eyes upon stood before her, towering over her, staring down at her.

It was known that the Night People were uncommonly beautiful but it did not prepare her for this woman. For an instant she was convinced that her life had lead to this one moment.

The woman looked pouty and quite upset to see Saben slouched behind the counter. She approached, nay rippled toward her, black hair like smoke stopped in motion hanging tumbling over her shoulders, her eyes sparkling grey, quick and cutting.

Saben pulled an earphone out of her ear as if seeking the dulcet tones of angelic choir that would herald the oncoming of the goddess on earthly feet.

"Where's Tobias?" The woman's voice was husky and hypnotic.

"The boss is out on...business," (six feet of blond babe). "Can I help?"

"Who are you?" She asked.

All thoughts went flying out of her mind, her tongue was tied and she could not recall her own name, her own self and she stared, mute, eyes turning liquid and distressed.

"Your name?" She snapped.

"Saben."

The girl smiled but it was not a friendly expression. "That's nice dear. What in the name of Ereshkigal are you doing here?" she tapped the counter.

Saben looked around the store and then back at the girl. "Working."

The girl gave a nasty expression that made the pit of Saben's stomach fill with dread. She swallowed around the lump forming in her throat.

Her eyes fell on the ruby and a black dahlia hanging between her breasts. Dahlia. She was a witch. The revelation made Saben sneeze and the pungent scent of her magic made her choke as subtle spells were being woven about her head.

Tobias walked into the store moments before Saben felt she was going to collapse into a spluttering frenzy. "Blaise?" He addressed the woman, ignoring Saben altogether.

The girl spun round and Saben sagged against the counter in relief, recovering from the intense scrutiny and suffocating press of magic.

Blaise and Tobias embraced tentatively. "Welcome home." He murmured in her ear.

"It's almost the Summer Solstice, I wouldn't miss one of Thierry's shindigs for anything." Her tone was guarded. She was all too aware of Saben's presence.

Saben wanted to slip out unnoticed, she was tempted to move, she made the smallest movement: sliding off her stool and both witches whipped round to stare at her.

Tobias hand went to his curls, and he massaged his scalp looking anywhere but at Saben. "This is Saben, she helps in the front of the shop."

"She's human." The contempt in the girl's voice did not go unnoticed.

Tobias winced. They had grown close the past couple of weeks Saben and Tobias. Working together in the little store amid the dust and potions. She was used to him running in and out, used to his smile, his smell, his being around her.

Tobias ran classes at the back of the shop whilst she sat at the front and dealt with customers. Lots of tourists came and always gushed at how wonderful the store was, they bought many things that baffled Saben.

Most clients called in advance and Tobias dealt with any major queries, Saben was exempt from such dealing and she didn't mind. With her ears stuffed with music and her fingers working the register, she was content to deal with the pocket change and use her spare time to write more material.

Before Day Break she was a writer. A writer and a singer.

There time had passed in peace and Saben was starting to find pleasure in coming, drinking the hotly brewed coffee in the morning and going home ready for sleep.

"Sabe. This is Blaise Harman, she owns this store."

Saben stared at the woman not knowing how to respond. She could feel the animosity rolling in bitter stinking waves and she covered her face as she sneezed again.

"Sorry, she gets sensitive."

"We need to talk, Tobias." Blaise said and smoothly walked through the beaded curtain expecting Tobias to follow. Her heels echoed as she ascended the staircase.

Saben looked to Tobias who returned her confused stare. He couldn't spare time to chat but squeezed her arm as he walked past. He picked up Blaise's bags and followed her into the back and up the stairs.

Saben listened from beside the beaded curtain, their voices carrying down the stairwell. "How dare you allow vermin to serve in my grandmother's store. She would be turning in her grave if she knew a little street rat was tapping at her register."

"Saben's a good kid. She works hard. If it wasn't for her this store wouldn't be functioning."

Saben felt both distressed and pleased by his response. She was a 'good kid'. There was a time when she was more than that. More than just this work. More than keeping out of trouble. She was more than a child too, she was a woman with hips, tits and fingertips.

She sat back down on the little stool and waited. They argued a long time before Tobias ran down the stairs and stormed out of the back entrance, the light fixtures rocked as he slammed the door on his way out.

She felt instantly nervous. Like prey, left alone with the woman Tobias had called Blaise Harman, owner of the store.

No one came into the store for the rest of the afternoon and Saben was dutifully stuck to the stool, her eyes seeking the sight of Tobias through the dusty slits in the front windows. When Blaise Harman did come down stairs, Saben was sweeping the floors.

Saben had begun to sing along softly to the music in her earphones, it was her singing that brought Blaise down to her.

She froze. Taking out her headphones to face the formidable young witch. "He speaks highly of you, human." She said placing hands on her hips.

Anger filled her and she felt her fists begin to shake with it. "I don't need him to speak for me, lady. If you want me to leave I'll pick up my stuff and go. I don't want any trouble. He's a good guy, doesn't need any shit."

Blaise cocked her head. She blinked and her lips parted as if she detected something wrong. Celeste Morgan often had that look in her eyes when she focused on Saben's face. "What?" Saben asked.

Blaise shook her head. "Nothing."

"Just let me finish up and I won't bother you again."

"No. Wait."

Blaise took her hand and lead her to the stool. She stroked her palm, smoothing out her fist. The contact of her cool hand, the cold metal of her rings made Saben shiver and she felt a distant jolt. The feeling of de ja vu. Whatever Blaise may have read or felt of Saben she kept to herself.

"Do you know who owned this store before me?"

"Before Toby?"

Blaise's eyes flared but she nodded.

Saben shook her head, no.

"My grandmother. She was a great woman. The Crone of all witches. Do you know what that means?"

"She was powerful?"

"Yes." Her eyes flared again. "You don't belong here Saben Mariley Frost yet here you are."

Saben pulled back and slid of the stool, reaching for her bag and her Discman, packing away to storm out as Tobias had done earlier. Blaise merely stared at her all the while.

She was about to leave through the back when Blaise Harman's husky voice piped up. "Don't be late tomorrow." Saben glanced backward. "Or we'll dock your pay."

Saben nodded and headed home, slamming the door behind her on the way out.

It didn't take long to get home. Saben luxuriated in the feeling of her newfound anger, the emotion sung in her veins and she felt more alive than she had in months. Blaise Harman's eyes were imprinted on the back of her eyelids. Bewitching and dangerous.

She climbed the staircase of her building, Cathedral thrumming through her headphones, she was outside number 52 and was surprised to see Tobias sitting by her door.

His shirt was crumpled and hair out of place, no sunglasses on his head and no sense of swagger. She slumped down beside him pulling her head phones down. "You okay?" She asked when he didn't speak.

He turned his head toward her, staring at her profile too closely as if checking her over for any signs of abuse or distress. "Are you?"

The sound of his voice deflated any sense of anger and she dropped her head to hide a small, sardonic smile. "That's a loaded question."

He laughed, short and strained and she glanced at him, admiring his smile, the way his eyes sparkled in the dim hall light. Kind blue eyes, so different from…from…Her eyebrows came together as she frowned.

"I suppose you heard everything?" He blushed and she didn't expect to see it, she turned her head away.

"Some. Enough to know when I'm not wanted." She replied feeling the sting of his words 'she's just a kid'. _But that's not all I am,_ she wanted to say in fierce defence but bit her lip to stop the words from escaping her mouth.

She was sure she was more, more than the sum of her butchered memories too, if only she could remember, if only she could forget…They sat in silence for a while, listening idly to the noises of the building, the rattling of the pipes and the reverberation of many voices.

"I want you to know, I don't think like that." His voice was soft, kind and unexpected.

"It's okay." She said and gathered herself to stand unable to sit with him a moment longer or else be reminded of how shit she was, how low a priority on the agenda of the Night and least of all in the Day. "It's fine." Because that's the way it had always been.

He stood too, grasping her arm and forcing her to look into his face. "No it's not."

His hand was hot on her skin and she grit her teeth trying not to let the sudden thrill ignite inside her._ You're just a kid, remember? _She thought viciously to herself. _He can' think you're anything more than that and you shouldn't want him to. _But she feared that she did. It had been so long since…

"I'll see you tomorrow, okay?" She said shrugging out of his grasp, trying to make him leave. She felt awkward, as if her skin was swelling and the air turned thin to choke her. The energy between them was too charged, crackling ,static energy amplifying the fluttering in her stomach.

"Okay." He breathed and a shiver rippled through her.

He watched her close the door between them and she leant against the door until she heard his footsteps retreat toward the staircase.


	10. Chapter 9

Nine

December 1995

The magic and mystery of the longest night.

A call went out to all those of the Day and Night World beckoning pilgrims from afar to gather in celebration.

It was Solstice Eve and Saben sat alone in her apartment writing on the walls. Her hands stained in black paint, pungent fumes of the ink making her dizzy with clarity. Her walls were covered from top to bottom and she was running out of space until the fragments had more desperate scrawls on top of old.

When Celeste Morgan paid her visits, Saben would have to disguise her walls, paint over them to re-write but the words only ever came back.

It was as if her creative mind were trying to vomit forth a memory she had lost. She had scrawled the word 'time' so many times. Running out of time. Mortality. Immortality. What was she trying to remember? What time?

Geoff Deckard playing guitar. A mic pressed to her lips. Strangers with their hands raised to the stage. The breath of an old house. Blood on the tiles. Greasy plastic phone piece pressed to her mouth.

Frustrated and sad she wrote on the walls.

She was furiously scratching the word Time to conceal more of the same beneath it. She remembered Pin Cushion's van, the stench of old leather, dirty equipment, old sex, Heather Mazahura's cool fingers stroking her scalp, the strobe lighting of the Black Iris club. Her head thrown back exposing her throat.

She sighed.

Earlier that evening she had watched Blaise Harman ready herself for the longest night. Dressed beautifully in black, she had woven pearls and flowers in her hair. Saben had watched all of this from a distance, in reflections and periphery.

She could imagine the celebration, built a vast and beautiful fantasy in her mind's eye. A decadent affair with rippling silk and jewels. A bacchanal, lovers swooning, hot flesh drenched as they danced hypnotic to tribal rhythms.

Her hands dropped from their effort, she wiped her eyes with the back of her hand the vision of the walls beginning to blur. She stumbled to the window, pulled it up to let humid air wash over her. She hated the desert.

The streets were deserted and why not? She had heard the People march out of the building, car pooling to the mansion where the biggest party in the Night World calendar was underway. The gracious host, Thierry Descourdres, a Night World Elder and human sympathiser.

A place where People and people intermingled. She blinked and a startling sensation of cool silk sheets against her sore broken lips and the sweet pressure of someone on top of her smelling of sweat, sex and blood. She rubbed her eyes again resigned to the poison of the pen fumes.

She leant in the window sill looking out at the dusty streets dappling in moon glow. Saben had been to the mansion once, surrounded by suits undergoing a barrage of interviews as the infernal Circle had tried so valiantly to place her. She was useless to them it seemed, a nobody with fractured memories.

As the first whiff of self pity emanated she saw the silhouette standing in the middle of the road. She leant forward, mesmerised and she could have sworn the stranger was staring up at her. Her leaning was perilous but she was drawn, it was a soul sucking stare and only a painful grip on the window sill itself stopped her from plummeting to her doom.

Even as she blinked she thought she heard a voice but it was not from someone's lips, it slithered into her skull saying_ It hurts when I…_

There was a knock at the door. Shocked out of her reverie, her heart hammering, meaty on her tongue she strived to swallow her pulse. She half dreaded seeing the silhouette at the door but when she made her way slowly to it, opening it a slim crack it was Tobias she found standing there.

"Why aren't you ready?" He strode into the apartment, pushing her aside before she gathered her wits to block him out.

"Ready for what?" Her voice was distant, trembling as her mind lingered on the silhouette's stare.

Tobias stopped short when he saw the wild scrawling surrounding them. "What is this?"

She shrugged. "I ran out of paper."

He tore his eyes away from it and turned back to her to find her shivering in an oversize t-shirt she wore like a dress, paint smeared combat boots unlaced and pink hair severely restrained from her face. He went to close the window as if it were the breeze that made her cold.

She suddenly felt self conscious as she noticed he was dressed in an expensive shirt and slacks, looking older than usual and quite handsome. He was also lit with something extra, something that made him look more exotic, more compelling, the static energy rose between them.

She sneezed.

"This won't do." He said and walked to her bedroom. She heard the creek of her wardrobe doors and slowly followed to watch him rifling through her Ts and things. He seemed to find something, though his back was to her for a long time when he turned back round he presented her with a white dress. "Why don't you wear this?"

"I don't wear dresses." She said as if it were a dismal fact. He looked at her sceptically but her expression held no malice or stubbornness. She had never worn a dress to her recollection. She had been homeless early in her life and she knew fine things did not belong to her.

"Where did you get it?"

"My therapist thought it would be a good idea."

"Celeste Morgan." Tobias smiled fondly as he spoke her name. Saben wondered if he'd slept with her and felt the small prick of jealousy.

He threw the dress at her and she caught it with her stained hands. They held each other's gaze for a long moment.

"Get dressed. We haven't got all night."

Her eyes darkened and her grasp on the dress became hard and angry. "I said I don't want to go."

He let out a long sigh. "You don't go anywhere except the shop, do you?"

"I go to therapy." She looked to the walls before looking back into his face. "It's too dangerous out there."

"I'll be there."

She shook her head, no. There were too many unpredictable elements, all out there to eat her. She had seen a little slice of hell that day, leering demons, rancid saliva and too many teeth. She shuddered at the thought.

"Saben."

The energy rose again, like electricity and heat, it made the hairs on the back of her neck rise. "You shouldn't have come here." She said suddenly on the verge of tears but she couldn't fathom why. Her fingers ached with the need to write to pick up her guitar and play.

"Get dressed." He said firmly.

Perhaps it was the way he said it, she wasn't used to being ordered around, or at least she thought she wasn't. Maybe it was magic or mind control but it worked and she pulled her shirt over her head exposing her body riddled with tattoos.

Chrysanthemums, a peacock, stars and sakura. Slender tribal designs woven into an exotic picture that covered her back, crept onto her upper arms and wrapped around her stomach and hips.

After the initial shock of her sudden nudity, Tobias looked away his cheeks turning red as if he were embarrassed.

She moved slowly and deliberately, knowing that she was no more than a child in the eyes of the People. Hating that she was considered a creature, something to be pitied. Thinking perhaps she could be something more.

She slipped the dress on. "Can you get the back?" She asked struggling to reach the zipper.

He pulled the zipper up cautiously, careful no to nip her skin, his fingers lingering on her inked flesh and she shivered. Something changed. The whispering touch of his fingertips and breath on the back of her neck.

She felt ashamed, maybe she was trying to seduce him. Was she? How long had it been since she'd been with anybody? She stepped away from him, caught between desire and feeling ridiculous.

He stared at her with his lips parted, staring as if she were a creature that would disappear at the slightest sound, the merest move.

The dress was Grecian in style, flowing white chiffon with some beaded detail just under her bust. She was still in her combat boots and this made him smile. "Come here." He pulled her hair out of its bun and pink hair spilt over her shoulders. He pulled a flower from thin air and placed it in her hair.

"I look like a fool." She stated blandly.

"You haven't seen yourself."

"I don't have to." She whispered her ink stained hands clenching into fists and the anger was back again.

"Come with me to the Solstice ball."

"I'm sure your latest squeeze would object to having a punk ride in the two seater with you."

Tobias laughed. "I'm not going with anyone else."

She frowned at him. Crackling electric energy suddenly swirling about them, all his kindness, his soft words and closeness going to her head. But there was something about this night of all other nights had made a change in him as it had many of the People she'd seen.

Their skins lit with a magical glow as if they were filled from tip to toe with magic, as if currents of divine thunderbolts were glittering beneath their flesh and eyes. Tobias offered his hand and it seemed to glitter.

She looked into his eyes, wide, blue, kind and knew that if she took his head something would change. They would come together in ionic attraction and something would break in her, the shroud of solitude would fade, she had been frightened for so long….

She took his hand.


	11. Chapter 10

Ten

December 1995

A modest gathering of vampires on this the Longest Night. It was a poorly lit room full of cold, suspicious creatures wearing youthful masks, trying to hide their contempt behind sips of blood wine and empty conversation. Their bright eyes flicked slyly left and right.

Looking through the crowd of black suits and elegant dresses, Abberline's eyes met Celsia Verain's from across the room. _Now don't look at me like that_, her voice was like a frigid breeze through his psyche. His lip twitched. _You needed the distraction._

"…Eh, Cebren?"

He looked down at the child-faced vampire who had speaking to him for the last several minutes. Deceptively young, but then they all were. The boy, Christobal standing beside him was several hundred years old, his skin vibrating with Power and his eyes brimming with the melancholy of experience.

"I have no political design." He replied concealing his boredom behind a fallacious smile. "And don't call me by that name."

Christobal giggled, high pitched and embarrassed before he chugged down his glass of blood. "Rumour has it the old cheese has discovered his son."

Abberline's face became smooth, expressionless, exuding no sense of opinion, no room for them to sense weakness. "Now that is very interesting." Any scrap of news about Hunter Redfern was considered currency in these circles.

"Time to leave I think." Celsia slipped her pale arm in his and gently tugged him away from the conversation.

The vampire boy scowled at them as they walked away, his eyes lingering on Celsia's long, creamy pale legs.

_Thank you. _His expression remained blank as they made their way through the club, striding past the bar and into the street. "What are old friends for?" Celsia's smile had a razor edge.

The air was thick with currents of magic and it made Abberline's nostrils clog, his throat itch. "What are we going to do tonight of all nights?" He asked wiping his nose with the back of his hand.

Celsia put her small, cold hand in his and they walked in silence, enjoying the balmy night though they couldn't feel a thing. Celsia sighed softly but Abberline barely seemed to notice, he had been preoccupied a lot lately.

"Tell me you haven't thought about her." Celsia whispered.

Abberline froze, his body shaking with barely restrained rage. Her. Saben Mariley Frost. The very thought of her name made his insides smoulder, memories of her consumed him at night, her soft human flesh, her sweet scents and husky voice. He had thought about her, again and again and again…

Celsia detached her hand and with an eerie glow to her icy blue eyes she spoke. "I know what she was."

"What do you think she was?" His voice was deceptively calm though he continued to shiver.

Celsia bared her teeth. "It's not a secret with the Old Powers rising, Cebren."

He hissed at the sound of that name. She was goading him and hew knew this but he wasn't going to reveal a thing. He kept his memories, his obsessions, his desires close to his chest. He could only bring himself to half-regret not killing Saben Mariley Frost. As if killing her had ever been an option.

"What does it mean though I wonder?" She continued to walk on.

In a flash he had a hand around Celsia's throat, putting enough pressure to crush her windpipe. "Nothing. It meant and means nothing to me, do you understand?"

Though a smile formed at the corners of her mouth, her eyes drank in the seriousness of his expression and she gave the barest of nods. He released her.

She rubbed her throat.

He continued to walk down the street and she had to jog to catch up to him.

"Ah, this is a night for witches and sentimental fools." Celsia said slipping her arm through his. "What say you to gate crashing Lord Descourdres soiree?"

Abberline lifted his face to the sky and laughed.

*

The Night was sparkling with beautiful People. Just as Saben had imagined: their eyes, their gowns, their jewellery, They were as bright as the city at night time. It was a fragrant gathering, the sickly sweet stench of magic. Saben felt dizzy from it all, tears formed in her eyes and discreetly wiped the leaking snot from her nostrils.

She was enveloped in the infectious feeling of mirth, as if a spell had been woven in the air but there was an underlying sorrow and beneath this her own suspicion.

Tobias had left her side as soon as they entered the grand amphitheatre where the festivities were being held. Phosphorous light, burning with magic lit up even the most secretive crevices of the hall and the People dappled in the beams.

Some were dressed in masks, showing their support without revealing their faces. They gathered in clusters, conversing and entertaining one another with wine in one hand or punch in another.

They had stared as she had entered on Tobey's arm and she recognised some of them, the girls all glared at her. Malice and cool hatred shining in their alien eyes. She could hear some of them talk_. Tobias' charity case. Taking pity on the poor lonely human. Tobias' pet stray._

She wanted to turn and confront them, to scream and fight but they were all predators, she was surrounded by sharks and her heart was an open wound.

Saben was dismally alone and she avoided the roving eyes of half-recognisable people. Though the place was beautifully lit it had the same crawling dark unease as the Black Iris clubs had. She couldn't shake the feeling of danger, of not belonging.

She moved from alcove and pillar trying not to attract attention. She felt ridiculous in her dress, her step obstructed by the skirt preventing her from running or even moving too fast.

She was given a candle by a petite blond who wore a simple white shift, a witch surely, Saben thought. She had fresh violets woven into her blond hair. "Merry meet." She murmured and looked deep into Saben's eyes and quickly walked away with a furrowed brow. Saben sneezed as she departed.

After long moments of excitement a hush fell among the crowd and lights swelled on the stage. A group of old women and an aged man stood on stage and they were joined by Blaise, the candle-giving blond and eventually Tobias.

"We light these candles in memory of one of our greatest leader. Edgith Harman's legacy lives on in our lives and hearts." The candles lit altogether and Saben was shocked by it. Witch magic. She shivered and dropped the candle.

As the gathered surged forward, she used the opportunity to back away, wanting to run but instead stepping back slowly to disappear to the outer darkness of the amphitheatre.

She backed up into someone and turned an apology hot on her tongue when the sight of the blond woman with icy blue eyes made her apology turn into a cry of distress. Warning bells were going off in her mind, she knew this woman, knew her and knew enough to fear her.

Saben wrenched herself out of the woman's feeble grasp and plunged into the crowd, she ran into a circle of arms, looking up to a masked stranger. Blue eyes shone out more familiar than even the woman's. Her breath caught in her throat and she couldn't scream. There was a strange and pervading feeling like heat swirling in her solar plexus.

She could already taste him in her mouth, as if he were touching her everywhere at once. He grasped her wrists with gloved hands and drew her into some secluded shadows.

His eyes met the blond girl's from across the room as they went. They seemed to be speaking wordlessly and a pained expression lit the woman's face.

"What do you want?" Saben stammered, dimly annoyed at the feeble sound of her own voice.

There was no response just the cold, smooth mask.

"Answer me." She reached up and ripped down his mask. The face behind it was familiar and yet she had never seen his face, surely. He was mortified. His milky pale fangs fully extended and resting on his bottom lip. _Are you happy now? _A voice slithered into her mind.

"Who-"

He stared into her eyes as if searching for something, it was as if she could feel prying fingertips in her mind. She was mesmerised, tipping into the electric blue heaven hell of his gaze.

"Stop that."

He drew back but only for a moment and seemed overcome by emotion, before Saben could open her mouth to ask another question he ducked forward to kiss her. Her mouth was suddenly invaded by his tongue, his fingers plunged into her pink hair and another spread across her hip.

He held her as if they were lovers and was surprised to find herself relax in his hold, giving her weight over to him completely.

A strange kind of pain possessed her then. A jagged feeling like pins being dragged on sensitive skin. It made her shiver and tears slowly leaked from her eyes. It hurt to touch him.

*

Celsia was perched on a balcony overlooking Thierry Descourdres' expansive driveway. Each bush trimmed to perfection, each blade of grass mowed to perfect height. Night blooming jasmine wafted around the building barely disguising the thin shimmer of magic, spells of protection, of hearth and healing.

The party seemed to thrum through the very bricks and she swung her legs, resting back on her palms which were planted on the slim balcony rail waiting like a portrait of mock patience.

"You knew she was here." Abberline's voice was low and angry though she was never truly worried. They were very old friends.

Celsia didn't bother to turn or reply.

"Why did you bring me here?"

"I was serious before. Wouldn't it be interesting if we Turned her?" She said conversationally continuing to swing her legs.

"Celsia."

"It would be very interesting."

"You will not touch her."

"Is that an order?"

Abberline shook his head. He could not admit to Celsia what they both knew to be true, she had said it herself, the old powers were rising. If anyone were to find out he had tangled with a mortal he would lose his footing in the Night. The House of Cheber would fall.

If anyone were to find out he had a human soul mate they would both die.

*

Saben came too. Her vision cleared and she was startled to find herself surrounded by People, some wearing masks. As she gathered her wits she had the frightful feeling she was being set upon by beasts. She screamed and thrashed until someone grasped her hard.

Tobias got hold of her. She clung to him suddenly pressing her face into his arm, against his warm living flesh. "He's here." She whispered.

Tobias didn't understand but he cooed gently in her ear to calm her down. The People made a path for him to quietly lead her out of the theatre where many eyes stared after them. Curious. Angry. Inconvenienced.

She climbed into the passenger seat of his car and leant back against the cool leather seat. Shame made her cheeks burn and fingertips tingle with the need to write. "What's going on, Saben?"

She couldn't reply. She simply didn't know what to say. She had seen someone, someone that she was frightened of. Someone that invaded her nightmares, her dreams. Someone she couldn't remember but was all too familiar. She still had the taste of him in her mouth. The feel of his hands made her shiver and not all with fear.

She began to cry silently.

Tobias offered a tissue but when she didn't move to take it he leant forward to help mop the tears from her cheeks. "You've been through a lot."

She didn't say anything because she couldn't remember it all. Yes, there had been a lot but even the little she knew was becoming hard to remember. She didn't want his sympathy. She wasn't a child that needed mothering she should have known better than to come to this place where she didn't belong.

"Where do you want to go?"

She shook her head, her voice husky. "Anywhere."

He began to drive to no where in particular. She hated the desert. She felt numb as the sun crept up over the horizon.

Her head drifted to stare at Tobias' profile, remembering months of him romancing his women, preening and juggling like a shallow play boy. A prince among witches. What he was doing here, with her, she could not fathom.

She could still taste the stranger, feel his hot breath on her face, the horrible feeling of his mind pressing upon hers. She closed her eyes and it only made the sensations more real. It was easier to stare at Tobias, his chest rising and falling with each breath, his knuckles turning white from a tight grip on the steering wheel, his eyes intensely focused on the road ahead.

Parts of her were missing, she knew this. Something had happened and her subconscious was both blocking and vomiting events into her consciousness until she didn't know her up from down. She was haunted, maybe even descending into madness. Maybe her family had a history of it…

"I used to be in a band." She said softly and the sound of her voice startled him. "The last thing I did was walk out on them."

"I can't remember what happened after that."

He nodded but kept silent. Listening and looking to the road.


	12. Chapter 11

Eleven

Saben closed her eyes as her lips brushed the rough bulb of the mic for just an instant, her hot breath moistened the sponge beneath the mesh, her breath amplified and enveloped the room. It hypnotized the creatures wallowing in the outer darkness.

Sweat dripped down her neck, running between her breasts, soaking into her shirt. "I want to tell you a secret." She spoke in a bare whisper but the audience was riveted.

Dozens of eyes stared up at her, mouths open, waiting. Just waiting. They all hung on her words, her breathy voice, her emotions strained through her throat. "But they'd kill me if I tried."

A bass string vibrated through the amp she closed her eyes to savour the ripples through her bowel. "My mouth is filled with poison."

She grasped the mic stand, white knuckled grasp as if it were the last solid thing on earth. "My heart is filled with…"

She crouched over the mic, cradled it, the growl emanated deep from inside, rolling out of her mouth, clashing against the down tuned cadence of the seven string guitar that joined her in unholy chorus.

*

Saben's back pushed against a rough brick wall, cool hands reaching beneath her shirt, her mouth covered by the vacuum of His. "Say it." He whispered into her mouth. "Say it."

"I belong to you." She whispered and felt His delight, His mouth moving to her throat, the hardness of teeth, the sharpness of it. His touch like the tip of a thousand blades scoring her flesh from the tip of her head to the tip of her toes.

"Say you remember." He grunts.

She couldn't tell a lie.

*

"How did it feel?"

Saben forced herself to look into Celeste Morgan's pretty face, illuminated by the sunshine that invaded through slits in the blind. "Like I was myself again."

"Good." Though the crease in Celeste's brow made Saben believe she thought otherwise.

And why not? Saben had lied about most things. Everything but this.

Celeste forced a smile to her lips.

*

She ripped the mic from the stand, she screamed and the crowd rippled on the whim of her voice. Some screaming with her, others with their heads thrown back as if riding the note as she stretched it to its limit.

Violence. She sought this through her music. To decimate every trace of the lost and confused. When she strode up and down before the bright eyes of spectators she was a goddess. A leviathan. Fierce and commanding.

More than human.

She threw herself around the stage. Grunting into Charlie, the bass player's face. His eyes weren't quite right, his teeth sharper than was natural. Hunger rolled off of his skin in sickening waves. She hated him for it as much as he terrified her.

He snarled back joining her in a furious chorus. "Destroy! Devour! Defile! Control!"

*

"Here?" Tobias asked brows coming together in distress. "Now?"

She looked around at the deserted store, sunlight filtering through the dirty windows, casting kaleidoscopes across the floor, red, green and blue…

"Yes." She said grasping his wrist pulling her toward him. "Now."

*

"You're doing tremendously well."

"That your professional opinion?" She asked twirling a strand of pink hair about her finger.

Celeste's lip quirked in a half smile as she scribbled something down in her yellow legal pad. "You and Tobias doing okay?" She asked without looking up.

Saben nodded but her eyes had already slipped to the window.

Her and Tobias. Behind closed doors, stolen moments, rarely in the public eye. They had been doing okay for a while now.

Tobias was a gentle with her, he was a tender and passionate lover. Always conscious of her fragile mind he never pushed her too far. She knew he liked to take care of her, he like to be around her even when she went crazy.

He did things that drove her insane; but he never came rolling into her room in the dead of night, drunk, sweaty, and demanding. But then again he never grasped her with intensity or set his mouth against hers as if he were sucking up her soul through her throat. Like…like…

*

A mouth searing hot at her throat, hard sharp bitter-sweet pain drawing on her veins, her life and it was okay because it belong to him. It had always been his. _Say it._

Her lips trembled. "I…"

*

She held a finger to her lips. "Shhh" She dropped the mic to the stage with a thud. She strode off stage but the musicians continued to play, their frantic pace only beginning to slow, to change to turn into a grimy groove that left the audience twisting, grinding, wanting more.

She could hear the cheers rise.

She staggered down the short stairs, into the slim, dark passage where she double over and gagged.

Chanting rose from the hall.

She collapsed against the wall, head leaning back against the hard brick. She closed her eyes and her sight was filled with electric blue vision. The colour so vivid and mesmerising she fought to open her eyes again.

Charlie was crouched beside her then, he thrust his face in her damp hair, licking sweat off her skin. Saben was repulsed but could not deny the dark desires that grew with his hot breath against her collarbone. A low growl from his throat vibrated through her groin and she pushed him away.

She let out a breath that almost formed the syllables of a name…

The crowd was screaming her name.

*

"May I?" Celeste lifted a hand.

Saben shrugged.

Celeste moved forward and place a naked hand to her cheek. The witch closed her eyes, her lips parted as she relaxed into a concentrated state and suddenly she gasped, her body rocked and she fell back from Saben.

It took her a few moments to recover, she smoothed her hair back with her hands and all the while Saben stared, her cheek burning from Celeste's touch.

"What did you see?" Saben's voice was cold, curious.

Celeste pursed her lips. "You're making good progress, Saben."

"What did you see?" She persisted.

Saben wondered if she saw the same thing. Blue. Electric bright bursts of blue. Infinite heavens and oceans of blue. Blue so deep you could drown. Blue so deep it grew as dark as the pit. It was the colour of death.

Celeste refused to answer her.


	13. Chapter 12: Night of 1000 Torches

Twelve

Two Years Later

The window was lightly misted with the heat of a magic kissed night. Saben Mariley Frost perched on the edge of the window sill and watched the sprawl of the street below where a silhouette stood unmoving in the semi-darkness.

Her eyelids fluttered closed and for an instant she could feel the phantom of someone standing behind her. Lips cool on her neck, teeth hard on her bare shoulder. She leant her head against the cool window pane and watched her breath mist against the glass as she sighed.

Every year on the Longest Night, since she had lived in the desert, someone stood and watched from the street below.

"Aren't you going to be late?"

She turned with a start. Tobias was struggling to do up the buttons in his shirt, fingers made clumsy from his overwhelming nervousness. Tonight was a big night for Tobias, for the whole of the spell casting nation in fact. The excitement in the air was almost too much to bear, claustrophobic, cloistering, like the dense air of a smoke filled club.

She forced a smile to her lips and went to him, quickly feeding buttons to the holes. She smoothed her palms on his chest when she'd finished and felt the rhythm of his heart beneath her hand. "Everything's going to be fine." She assured him.

He kissed her and her body was awash with desire to stay, to cling to the warm muscled flesh. "I'm going to be late." She whispered against his lips but he didn't stop sliding his mouth across her cheek. His breath was fever hot on her neck and she trembled.

Her eyes fluttered closed and she was swept in a memory of cool lips as delicate as a moth wing on her skin and the sharp tip of a tooth pressing painfully into the soft part of her neck.

She pushed Tobias away, shaken by the memory. Her breath laboured and eyes haunted and she stared up at her lover whose mouth was set in a thin suspicious line.

"Saben-"

There was a sudden knock on the door.

"That must be Charlie." She said picking up her jacket and heading for the door.

"I'll see you there then?"

She had already closed the door behind her.

Charlie leant against the wall, a cigarette bobbing between his lips as he chewed on gum. He looked at her from the corner of his eye, taking in her lacerated boots and faded Venom tee. He took the cig from his mouth and flashed a toothy grin at him. "Okay?"

Saben grasped Charlie's arm and hauled him toward the staircase without saying a word.

He ducked to take a sniff of her, soaking in the heady mix of confusion.

"Don't start with me, Charlie." She said through her teeth and raised her collar high.

"You don't look so good, Sabe." He muttered.

"Thanks."

"No, I mean. You look pale, sweaty." He touched her forehead. "Are you coming down with something?"

She batted his hand away. "Let's just get to the place in one goddamn piece, please."

*

The ceremony would commence at a minute to midnight.

Saben Mariley Frost searched the crowd for her lover, amidst the glittering masks, sashes and gowns she could barely tell friend from stranger. Tobias, she was sure, had not yet arrived.

She and Charlie had arrived early for the sound check. Not being a supernatural she couldn't guarantee the carriage of her voice and would be the only act using a microphone on the longest night.

As she stood at the mic, breath grazing it, eyes staring out into the unlit expanse of the grand hall a wave of memory hit her and she closed her eyes to absorb the shock of images. Dark undulating crowds, the inhuman graceful rippling of the People, their eyes staring up at her, shining like beacons, deceptive lights to lure, to trick, for their teeth and claws to devour.

And then those brilliant blue eyes, like electricity searing through the din and deep into her soul. She came out of the memory, her heart hammering in her chest. At that instant a thousand eyes that could read her thoughts and she felt guilty.

Charlie gave her a strange look before laying down his bass.

"I'm okay." She said. Her mantra. _I'm okay_. Though she wasn't. Not really and not for a long time.

She walked off stage, dragging her feet.

She loathed the spectacle beyond the curtain. The People gathered, beings of magic and wonder and her wandering through the crowd, lost and lonely. Though they knew who she was, Tobias' lover, not all were happy about that.

Tobias was important, rising in the ranks of the Circles where big things were predicted for him. After all he was the Crone's last apprentice, had taken up duties in her Vegas practise whilst the Harman heir, Blaise Harman was in education.

Over the years Saben had learned a little more of Night World politics, not all of it was easy to digest, being human in the strange alien world was not an easy thing to bear. She was still plagued by flashbacks which the psychologists had concluded was a vampire attack that had muddled her mind, something that was irreparable.

Tobias had been accused of taking her to his bed for this reason, as an act of charity, a gesture to the Day that he was committed to peace between humankind and the Night.

Saben turned her head away from the snide whispers, the undercurrents of jealousy of those accusations.

The ceremony was rushing on, she had barely raised a glass of punch to her lips before Thierry Descourdres appeared on stage. He stood in a shaft of light. Wearing a smart suit and holding an unlit candle. The People pressed closer to the stage, delighted to see their benefactor and leader deliver a rousing speech that barely reached Saben's ears.

Saben's eyes was on the look out for Tobias, wanting to apologize.

"…In honour of The Crone." Thierry bowed his head and all seemed to follow suit. The candle in his hand burst to light. All candles were lit, each Person held one aloft and the room was a beacon of glittering wicks. The wax was scented clogging the room with sweet perfume.

Alex was on next and was glad to escape the pungent smell of the spell the candles weaved.

She approached the mic with a dramatic reverence. She took hold of the stand as if it were a lover and softly began to sing. A bluesy track, a ballad speaking of love found and lost and fading but never forgotten. Ode to a night lost in memory.

Charlie was beside her, concentrating on the groove and as always when he played she could close her eyes and felt suspended on the rhythm of his playing, safe in the pattern he slapped or plucked.

Glittering eyes stared up at her. There was nothing sinister in that but she longed for the sweat and screaming of her soul music to rise through the hall and drown the shining throng in dark melodies.

She finished to the sound of applause, when she exited the stage they were offered congratulations and smiles. She couldn't focus on this.

"Have you seen Toby?"

No, no one had, masks indicated with polite shakes of their heads. She headed back to the party, watching a vampire quartet fill the room with complicated chorus. The crowds were swaying as they danced, blending seamlessly into one beautiful organic and glittering mass.

Except one. He wore a mask painted black, the eye holes fringed with real diamonds that glistened beneath the witch light, but the mask had no mouth.

He offered a gloved hand and she reached for it, not hesitating for a moment but trusting blindly like a child. He danced with the inhuman grace of a vampire. Their feet barely touching the solid ground it was if they were floating and she was filled with such peace all thoughts were pushed out.

She lay her head on his chest and could hear no heart beat.

He whispered something, so soft, she could barely hear it but conjured meaning through memories. She was enveloped in a sense of unquestionable belonging.

Memories flowed to her as the chord that bound them wrapped them together like a celestial gift. The wasteland of her memories flourished and she remember more of him. Him. His cold mouth softening in a kiss, the tips of his teeth pressed into his bottom lip, and the alien tenderness he had shared with her not so long ago after a show in California.

"Things are different now." She could feel her lungs constrict as she spoke. "I can't do this with you anymore…I'm in love with someone else."

His body sang with tension. The music changed, a different magic descended, she was torn apart from her partner and could not spy him in the converging crowd.

"Wait." She called and pushed her way through the People. "Please don't go." As if she could erase what she had said.

The June air was dry and hot and made her nauseous as she burst outside in a tangle of pink hair and silk gown. "Did you see him?" She asked the closest Person, leaning on the stranger heavily whilst she looked wildly to and fro.

The Person held up his hands to show he had nothing, had seen nothing and moved on.

"Have you seen him?" She asked no on in particular.

"Who?"

She mumbled an apology and took blind steps into the night. The front of the mansion was filled with neatly rowed cars. She slipped between them searching for any hint of the vampire she had danced with.

She came across two figures embracing. It took only a moment for her mind to distinguish the sight of who they were. Leaning against a blood red car, the woman was wrapped around Tobias like a python.

Her heart beat rose in her ears, she struggled to catch her next breath. Nausea rose in a wave, a spasm of her throat and she doubled over and vomited the little she had eaten that day.

She heard her name being called from a distance but staggered away aimlessly into the night.

*

"Easy, easy." Blaise laid a cool hand across her head. "No fever."

"I feel sick." Saben muttered. "I'll be okay."

Blaise left briefly to mix a brew to calm Saben's stomach and she returned with a steaming cup of herbal tea. They sat upstairs in the magic shop. Blaise had already been there when she had ambled in declaring she didn't feel well. The witch had yet to make her grand entrance to the Descourdres party before Saben had slumped in the magic store's doorway.

As Saben sat and rocked slowly Blaise stroke her hair back from her face.

"He wasn't meant for you." Blaise cooed.

Saben's blood turned cold. "What?"

"You knew that from the beginning." She said simply. "He could never have truly been with you. He's a witch and you're-"

It seemed as if the witch were speaking of more than Tobias and her words cut deep. Saben stood wrapping arms around herself. "A stupid little human." Wasn't that what she had often been called?

"I have to go."

"Go? Go where?" Blaise stood trying to grab a hold of Saben's arm to calm her down to draw her back to her seat.

She didn't reply as she ran out of the store.

Like a mad Ophelia in the city she wandered bear foot, her hair wild about her face, her face wet with tears and regret. At some point that night she returned to her apartment. Crashing through the front door, she went to their room, the bed they shared was undone, pillows and sheets laying everywhere.

She fumbled with the box of the kit they always kept in the draw for emergencies. She sat in the bathroom with her skirt bunched into her lap, knickers at her ankles. Her bear feet were muddy and stained. Her fingers were wrapped around the plastic stick with a certain sense of dread.

"Shit." She whispered.


	14. Chapter 13

Thirteen

Saben had been walking for hours, hadn't slept since the Longest Night. She wrapped her arms around herself her thoughts racing. She had never wanted a child. If anyone knew she was carrying a bastard witch child they'd kill her. It was Night World law. Or worse yet the Day would take pity on its bastard blood.

"I'm sorry, kid." She murmured to the foetus. Tears had already dried on her cheeks, dust clinging to the glittering trails.

Her bare feet ached from her zig zag journey through the desert. Her tongue was thick, desolate.

She found herself suddenly standing in the middle of a residential neighbourhood, houses dappling in the early morning light.

Saben had never known this kind of life she wondered what kind of life a child of hers would have.

She knocked timidly on a door, waiting with trembling hands. A girl opened the door, she was no more than seventeen maybe a little older, her pretty face softened by long golden hair and Saben was struck by how different she was from Blaise. The difference of Day from Night.

"Hello." She said, the notes of those syllables brought fresh tears to Saben's eyes.

"You're Thea?" She asked, her voice was hoarse, trembling like her hands.

"We've met once before." Thea said though she couldn't place the girl's name nor face.

Saben took a step toward the girl. "Yes, I am…was…a friend of T…Blaise."

"Blaise? You know Blaise?" Thea's eyes lingered on her black feet, her muddy dress and wild pink hair. She drew her gently inside but a guarded smile lit her face. "Please come in out of the heat."

Saben found herself sitting on a couch. The smell of animals was strong, she could hear the snuffling of an animal beyond the door. She stared at the cosy living room, the mismatched furniture and picture frames bearing smiling faces of normal people. A picture of Thea and a blond boy twined together, their bright smiles were almost obscene.

"I don't know what to do." She confessed. "I need help but I don't know who-"

"What's the problem?"

She looked back at the photograph of Thea and her lover embracing and swallowed.

"If you don't tell me I can't help you."

"I'm pregnant." She whispered.

"Oh."

"Tobias…"

"Oh."

After a long silence she spoke. "I can't tell them, they wouldn't understand."

"And you thought I would?"

"You have a human lover, Blaise told me what you did for him: what you gave up for him." She stared up at the witch's face, benevolent features arranged in sympathetic distress but whether it was for her or the fact Blaise had confided such an intimate tale, Saben couldn't distinguish. "You have to help me."

"What exactly do you think I can do for you?" Thea was on her feet, pacing, already thinking.

"I have nowhere else to go." Saben hung her head.

Thea made an excuse to leave the room and she could hear Thea's voice through the halls. She was on the phone, maybe calling someone from the Day. Maybe Tobias. She felt the urge to leave and in a hurry, looking around the room for an escape rout.

Thea soon came back looking sad but resolute. "I'll arrange for a place for you to go but, Saben you have to tell Tobias about the child"

Shocked and relieved Saben's hand twisted on her stomach as if she could cup the multiplying cells in her womb. "Thank you."

Abberline stood at the large, tinted window of his apartment looking out on a glittering sprawl of the city below.

"Good night?" Celsia was seated comfortably on the couch and had been since before he had got in that night. She stared at him in silence until now, interrupting his reverie.

"There's no going back, Celsia." He replied cryptically.

"Sound advice." She replied running her hands up and down the back of the couch. "Come sit."

He shook his head, resolute to continue his vigil upon the city.

"Where were you tonight?" She asked her eyes narrowing into icy, suspicious slits.

He didn't reply.

"Abberline?"

He hid his face from her to disguise his tears but she caught a whiff of grief in the currents of the air. She stood and went to stand beside him at the window, her eyes on the sight of the winking lights beneath them. "You should not regret, Abberline. We are creature above the chattel, we should not be fond of our meat-"

He reached out and gripped her wrist, squeezing hard, grinding bones together. "Do no lecture me."

His eyes were intense, devouring, he was a vampire who had moved with the early tribes of the Nation, decimating empires and devouring humankind. She swallowed, eyes slipping to his hand on hers.

"Change her and end this mess." She whispered.

Possessed by inexplicable rage he pushed her to the ground. She landed gracefully, catlike, lifted her silver eyes to his face and let out a short sharp hiss. "Did you go to her tonight, Cebren? Did you go to her expecting her to swoon? Did she kiss you and confess everlasting love? She is yours for the taking if you would but take her."

His mouth fell open to reveal his fangs and his eyes turned an unnaturally bright blue illuminated by his anger. "You know nothing."

She laughed and rose to her feet, swaying slightly. "I have watched you in a daze for these past eleven years and for what? A child? A little nothing. Vermin."

"Don't push me."

"You are a Lord of the Night World, feared across the expanse of the globe, a nightmare, a scourge and yet you tremble. Take her, Abberline."

"She is already taken." He snarled.

She stared at him.

"I am not a creature to beg." He continued in a calm voice that did not match the wild storms in his eyes. "I will not debase myself by having her as a prisoner at my side spitting curses at me."

Celsia grit her teeth.

"It would mean both our deaths." Abberline was honour bound to the council who raised him to be a Lord of the Night. Through them he had power, through them he had command of legions of vampires. He could not turn his back for the company…the love of one human girl.

"You can sanction the change, persuade your allies to-"

"And what reason should I use? The truth?"

Celsia shook her head, no. They would set upon him like wolves on meat and they would pick him apart, hurtling toward execution. Death for an immortal was more fearful than for mortals, she knew. Attached to life as they were, centuries creeping to eons of life.

He walked up to her and lay a kiss upon her cold cheek. "You have such power of me now, Sia. I fear you'll use what you know against me, stab me in the back and twist the blade."

"You're right to fear me, but I would never betray you." Because she loved him though she would never again say it aloud.

"We will speak no more of this." He said arms encircling her, hands stroking her back. "And this thing will simply disappear."

"Yes, my Lord." She replied softly and thoroughly unconvinced.

Despite the danger of being there, Thea Harman marched into the magic store. Grandma's store, she thought to herself sadly. Suddenly surrounded by the familiar sights and smells she felt dizzy but she curled her hands into resolute fists, and didn't delay in bounding up the staircase.

"What are you doing here?" She spun round to find herself face to face with her cousin.

Blaise's arms were folded across her chest, her head tilted to one side a perfectly shaped eyebrow arched. She was radiant in her simple Egyptian dress reminded Thea of Ishtar, goddess of love, war and sex.

"I've just come to collect some things." Her voice was not as firm as she had wished and she felt instantly nervous.

"You know you're not supposed to be seen here. Where's Saben?" Blaise didn't beat around the bush. "I know she's been to see you." She approached only to pluck a single pink hair from Thea's shoulder.

"What of it?"

"No one has seen her since and I was curious as to why."

"Just leave it alone Blaise."

"You can't keep secrets, Thea." She shot back.

Thea shook her head and pushed past Blaise toward the spare room, a room she had stayed in once, the familiar place made her throat thick with tears. Blaise watched from the threshold as her cousin started to collect clothes from the drawers.

"How do you know that's hers?" Blaise asked.

Saben held up a t shirt riddled with holes. "Somehow I don't think this is Tobias' style."

She worked in silence after that, the tension between the cousins growing. Thea's unhappiness deepening as Saben's words buzzed about her head until she couldn't stand it any longer. She turned round setting an intense stare on Blaise who remained calm and cool. "Saben told me what you said about Witches and humans. It's a lie, a racist lie."

Blaise laughed. "Oh come on, Thea. The Circles would have never allowed it, it was ruining Grandma's good name having her star pupil settle down with vermin."

"Grandma would never have let you-"

"Grandma's dead."

Silence fell between them.

"I'm taking her stuff and she doesn't want either of you to see her again. Neither do I."

"Maybe it's for the best." Blaise nodded.

Thea shook her head, feeling the crushing weight of disappointed. Her lips trembled, eyes shining with unshed tears. She had thought better of Blaise, had hoped that Blaise could understand. "I hope you feel ashamed of yourself." She whispered before she left.

Climbing into Eric's car, Blaise watched from the window as they pulled onto the road and disappeared from sight.

"Thank you." Saben muttered as the unnamed vampire dropped her bag on the porch.

She looked up at the house. A large white painted haven, a safe house where no one would find her, no would care. She had been assigned a nurse to tend to her now and again because of her pregnancy but for now Saben was alone.

The keys jangled in her hand.

She put a hand to her flat belly. "Home sweet home, eh kid?"


	15. Chapter 14

Fourteen

Months Later

"You're not paying attention. This part is important."

Blaise Harman snapped her perfectly manicured fingers beneath Tobias' nose. Her nostrils flared delicately, as she finally lost patience with the man witch sitting in front of her. "You've spent most of your time daydreaming rather than reading. You think you're fit to lead?"

"That's enough." He declared pushing the scrolls and texts away from him, across the table. "That's enough for the day."

Blaise forced her chair out and stood, fingers wringing together. "What is wrong with you? It took us months to excavate the texts and even longer to master the language. You've been locked into intensive study for so long and now it sits before you and you can't even focus." She lifted the edges of ancient papyri, fourteenth century books and internet print outs of materials that could not be imported. The pungent scent of the papers was itself weaving a spell in the dim little office they had shut themselves in.

Tobias mumbled something indefinable.

"The Equinox is barely a few weeks a way." She said collecting the materials into piles, carefully laying the papyrus in its fabric sheaths. "We've no time to lose, this is too important to screw up now: the witches are seceding from the Night World, you will be primary to this decision standing with the Inner Circle on behalf of Circle Daybreak."

He didn't respond.

Blaise swore under her breath and slammed her door on the way to an interconnecting office. Of course she was right. Tobias had been studying and working hard to prepare for this split with the Night which coincided with his ascension to the Inner Circle of Witches. It was an honour rarely gifted to a male witch, not since Old Bob in the thirties.

His concentration had been slipping a lot lately as if his brain could not take another notch of information.

He pressed the intercom. "Zachariah bring the car around."

"Very well, sir." Came the reply.

He left the office to take a break from the musty stench of books. He bent down at a water cooler to fetch a cup from the machine and as he straightened he found Sheena Hawthorne leaning casually against the machine. "Unity, my Lord."

"Unity." He replied in monotone.

"Taking a break Tobias?"

He didn't reply, he barely even looked at her.

"You want to take a walk?"

Tobias only had the phantom of memories of being with a woman, Sheena being one of the last he had laid hands on and he couldn't deny that he was attracted to her. He felt something sharp dig in somewhere, the bitter edge of guilt dug in deep and unceasing. "Thanks but I don't think so."

"Come on. You look like you could use a…walk."

"Toby." Blaise appeared at the end of the hall putting hands on her hips.

The two female witches stared at each other, their eyes narrowing dangerously as one studied the other. Sheena face a tight lipped smile and mumbled goodbye to Tobias, her fingers sliding up his arm as she left.

Blaise raised an eyebrow as Sheena sashayed past.

"I don't believe it." She said.

Tobias was sipping on his water. "What?"

Blaise was silently surprised to see he hadn't responded to Sheena's obvious offer. "I bet I can guess what's got you so distracted." She said taking the cup from his hand and sipping on some water before passing it back. "Bubblegum pink hair and sings like a bird?"

"Don't."

"It's been what? Half a year? Maybe a little longer. Tobias, why don't you just get over it? There are bigger things happening in the world: say the proclamation of Consul to the Witches of Circle Daybreak."

"I know."

"You're not ready for it."

He crushed the plastic cup in his fist, water spilling over his wrinkled suit. "I will be, I just need a break." He said softly.

"Your car, sir." Zachariah appeared suddenly. A stout, grey haired man who was contracted as Tobias' chauffer on the order of Lord Thierry Descourdres himself who thought it prudent to elevate Tobais' experience in being treated like a man of power.

Tobias thanked him with a pat on the arm and he headed for the car.

"You're just a play boy, Toby." Blaise reminded cruelly before he disappeared from the hall. "You're not made for monogamy and she just learnt that the hard way."

Tobias gave every appearance of having not heard Blaise's words but he wasn't immune to what she had said. He was driven in silence to the Descourdres mansion, the landscape passed in a daze.

He was taken in quickly, escorted and left to wait in the salon, decorated sumptuously with Chinese silk, deep reds and dramatic black and gold detail. He took a seat on a small couch and waited to be admitted to Lord Thierry Descourdres private office.

The Mansion was buzzing with activity as the equinox approached.

He sat lost in thoughts, pondering how someone could simply disappear from his life. He still had the diamond ring sitting in his breast pocket, the ring he was going to slip on Saben Mariley Frost's finger after she agreed to marry him. He took the red velvet box out and opened it slowly, watching the diamonds glint in the light.

"Toby?" He was shocked out of his reverie and quickly pocketed the ring.

He got to his feet with a forced smile. "Thea?"

"Shall I bow, my Lord?" Thea teased. She looked radiant when she smiled, but was dressed professionally tonight, a full fledged member of the administration whilst college was on break.

"Penny for your thoughts."

"Reminiscing." He replied the ring burning a guilty hole in his pocket.

"About old lovers I bet." Thea smiled tenderly and touched his arm so they could sit together on the couch. "It must be about time."

"For what?"

Silence. He glanced at her face and could see the play of confusion and guilt as she turned her eyes to the floor. His heart started to thump in his chest, his next inhalation of breath shaky on the verge of excitement.

"You know where she is, don't you?"

"You mean she didn't tell you?" Thea's smalls hands were wringing together nervously.

"Tell me what?"

Saben Mariley Frost balanced the paper bag on what little bit of hip she could gain, her belly had grown so large and heavy she was often left fumbling to do the next task. She struggled to retrieve her keys to the house.

She suffered from agoraphobia these days, too afraid to spend too much time outside, for fear of being seen, for fear of falling, from simple fear. No one knew where she was though and so she would tell herself and calm her beating heart. It wasn't good for the baby, that's what her nurse often reminded.

She felt like cheering when she managed to get the door open.

"Saben." Her name was spoken.

It startled her she dropped the shopping bags and the glass bottles jars inside shattered around her ankles.


	16. Chapter 15

Fifteen

When Zachariah had turned the car into the neighbourhood Tobias felt his heart beat begin to rise, a pounding, he suddenly had an acute awareness of the blood pumping around his body, zinging to his very fingertips. The suburban neighbourhood had neatly trimmed lawns, large well kept trees planted at intervals barely disguising the white picket fence and matching porches.

"Stop the car." His voice was barely above a whisper.

"Stop." Shouting now. As soon as he saw the petite figure beyond the tinted glass he unfastened his seat belt and slid out of the backseat.

Zachariah shut down the engine and struggled to leave the car, running round barely catching the door as Tobias got out. He took long strides over the lawn, jumping over the low fence whilst the girl on the porch remained oblivious to his approach. "Saben?"

The girl's head turned and her dark eyes grew impossibly wide to see Tobias standing on the grass.

He watched as the bag fell from her precarious grasp and the glass shattered around her feet.

"Don't move." He instructed and went to her in four bounding steps, he lifted her easily. He was overwhelmed with the familiar sweet scent of her, and the sweet weight of her in his arms. He wanted to savour the moment, the moment that decimated all the convincing he had tried to do in the dark hours, the small voice that whispered their separation had been for the best.

"Uh, Tobias, can you put me down?" She said. Her tone did not fit into the happy reunion in his head.

"Oh, yes. Sorry." He set her down inside the hall of the house and it was the first opportunity to look at her. Her face was unchanged, her hair a dull shade of pink with the dark brown of her natural colour having grown out a few inches. She smoothed her oversized shirt down over her distended belly and his mouth went dry.

"You're…"

"A behemoth." She finished for him.

"Pregnant." He finished.

Tobias licked his lips, his eyes fastened to her belly mesmerized by the shirt logo stretched across her skin. "Saben-"

Saben was looking everywhere but at his face, she couldn't seem to speak though her lips trembled with the effort not to say everything at once.

He tore his eyes away to look at the house, it bore no personal stamp, no photo frames, no mismatched piece of furniture, he could see into the den, a blanket spread across the couch where Saben must have been sleeping.

When he looked back into her bleak eyes he saw the glossy shine of tears. "What do you want?" She asked stiffly.

"Can we sit down?"

She moved slowly, using walls and furniture to get by. He gently took hold of her arm and she gripped his skin hard as she lowered herself onto the couch.

He took a seat opposite her trying to give her the illusion of space.

She seemed to struggle to regain her composure but when she did speak it was stern and not like Saben at all. "I suppose Thea told you."

He nodded.

She shook her head slowly and he could see the anger blossom in the set of her mouth.

"I had a right to know, Saben."

The anger spilt into her eyes, into her very being. "You cancelled that right the instant you screwed around. I saw you that night at Solstice, I should have known from the beginning you were jerking me around. Tobias' fucking charity case."

"It was never that." He said sitting further forward on his seat, fighting the urge to reach out and grasp her hand.

Tears were rolling down her cheeks now.

"It's complicated." He whispered.

He could see her trying to remain cool and calm, she refused to meet his eyes. He wondered If she had spent so much time alone if she'd forgotten what it was to talk. He watched as she rubbed her bump, taking strength from the baby inside.

"May I?"

She looked up at him for a long time before giving the bare nod of permission, he got on his knees in front of her and splayed his palm across her. As if on instinct the baby kicked against his hand and wonderment and fear possessed him instantly. "Saben, tell me, is it mine?"

She hesitated, lips trembling with the truth and then. "What if it is?"

He met her eyes. The possibilities were limitless, the baby would be royalty amongst the Witch community, a future leader, heir Consul. She would bear immense responsibility, many lives would weigh heavy on her shoulders and the burden of great and powerful knowledge.

"Saben."

She was shaking her head, a stubborn defiance he had seen before when he knew she wasn't going to budge or change her mind. Even this expression made him tender.

There was a sudden, intrusive noise at the back of the house, they both turned their heads toward it.

Saben looked scared.

"What is it?" He asked.

She shook her head. "I don't know."

A smell of something rotten invaded their noses and Saben covered her mouth to stop herself gagging. More noise erupted and she grasped his hand hard.

She got up with difficulty, Tobias offered to help but she was more interested in seeing what it was. "You expecting anyone?"

She shook her head, no. Tobias went ahead of her as the noises sounded violent: the sound of plates and pans being thrown this way and that. They made their way to the kitchen in slow silent steps, Tobias peeked round the door to see a male figure with his back turned to him. The smell made him want to retch, instead his eyes began to water.

Saben tried to get a look to and as soon as her foot crossed the stranger turned around and she let out an almighty scream.

Tobias had seen ghouls before, when he was a boy he had helped raise a fresh corpse from the dead and had been punished so severely but his talent had not gone unnoticed.

This ghoul's face was grey, completely drained of any normal human colour, it's over large tongue lolled in its mouth making wet sounds. It's skin hung in thick grey folds and its eyes sockets seemed dark but there was the shrivelled raisins of its eyeballs. The creature had fangs.

It was wearing a leather jacket, jeans and motorcycle boots all covered in brown old blood.

Saben's eyes were wide, stuck to the ghoul's hideous mockery of a human face whilst whispering under her breath.

Tobias was slowly reaching for one of the kitchen chairs. The ghoul began to make noises as if trying to communicate with them but Tobias was deaf to it instead he took hold of the chair and swung it at the creatures head. The ghoul fell to the ground, knocked sideways but got right back up again.

Saben grasped Tobias shoulder, leaning heavily on him, screaming, "no." It took a moment for him to comprehend her command. "It's Geoff."

Geoff? She recognized the monster and the ghoul seemed to pay attention at the sound of his name, his eyes falling almost tenderly on Saben. But the wild animal anger was still in him and he reached for Tobias with the intent to rip the witch apart.

Tobias dodged out of his grasp but Saben's footing was foiled when he moved and she fell to the ground with a grunt. Geoff lurched toward her.

Tobias took hold of him , his skin was soft beneath his leather jacket and Toby didn't like the feel beneath his grip. Using all his strength Toby hauled the ghoul back to the ground and away from Saben.

He looked around for something, a broom, a wooden spoon, anything to plunge into the soft flesh and kill it but there was nothing around the granite surfaces. The ghoul stood, looming over Toby by a few feet. The stench of him made Toby dizzy.

They struggled for a few minutes, there wasn't enough space to do a spell and any witch fire might hurt Saben and soon the ghoul had him pinned against the wall and he had little choice as orange fire began to dance between his fingers.

Suddenly the ghoul cried out, a nonsense sound and he slumped forward heavily crushing Toby whose hand brilliantly hot with witch fire slipped into his skin and the soft parts of his pulpy organs.

Toby struggled to push the thing off of him and when he looked up he saw Saben holding a broken chair leg, blood and viscera running down her hand. She had stabbed him and his skin had been so soft and malleable she had managed to angle the stick into his soft heart.

He wanted to hold when he saw her shaking but even as he approached she had turned a peculiar pale shade and her eyelids began to flutter.

"What's wrong?" He asked softly.

"It's wet." She raised her other hand to show his slick reflection in her palm.

"What?"

"The baby's coming." She said and he caught her as she collapsed forward into his arms crying out in pain.

*

Saben was screaming. Nothing could have prepared her for the unbelievable pain of child birth, it was incomparable: the delicate balance of holding back and pushing and all the while, she was torn apart, her bones bending.

Tobias had been there in his gown, gloves and mask but she had grown frantic she asked the nurses to get him out and now he sat perched on the edge of the waiting room chair, listening to the echoes of Saben Mariley Frost screaming.

His baby was coming. The thought was too immense for him to handle, he wrung his fingers together and ducked his head praying to the goddesses of hearth and fertility to deliver both mother and child safely through it.

Lost in frantic prayers he barely noticed the temperature in the room drop. He looked up to see a tall silhouette slowly materialise into a man.

Tobias stood. "Hello?" There was no reply but he moved with such intense stride that Tobias knew he was not human. "Who in the name of the White Lady are you?"

Saben's scream echoed down the hall and the stranger's eyes seemed to glow an impossibly radiant blue that was at once silver and impossibly black.

Tobias eyes widened. Night Lord Cebren a Lamia seated on the Night World Council, he had a seat beside Hunter Redfern himself and was the Head of the House of Cheber. Tobias had known of him by reputation alone, and had a chance to meet with him briefly long ago when Edgith Harman had still been alive and lively in Night World politics.

He was the newest of the vampires to sit upon the Council though he was by no means the youngest. Older than Hunter Redfern and a born vampire he had wreaked havoc in history before settling down into a position on the US Council.

Rumour had it his mother had been a witch, a very powerful woman of the old world and his father was one of Maya's own born children. But these were just rumours.

The sight of him in the hospital was so absurd that Tobias was at an instant loss for words. Suffocating in the Power that swirled around the vampire. All the excitement of the imminent birth deserted him, the first slither of doubt, could this baby truly be his?

The Night Lord's eyes were glowing as if lit by stars, fixed on a faraway point. "Saben Frost is in there?"

Tobias nodded.

He studied the vampire's face, the pinch of his lips, the intensity of his eyes fixed to the distant as if he could see through brick and wood and steel right through to Saben on the delivery bed. "You're the one aren't you?"

He turned his eyes toward Tobias, not truly looking at him but through him.

"You're the reason she is the way she is."


	17. Chapter 16

Sixteen

Abberline had called his People to the hospital, some infiltrating the hospital staff, they took their turns checking on the new born and steering prying eyes away from the room reserved for Saben Mariley Frost alone. "Your…professional opinion." Abberline murmured.

"It's hard to tell, My Lord. He has his mother's eyes." The silver haired woman replied biting her lip nervously.

Abberline nodded. "See what you can do, Scylla, that's all I ask."

"Of course."

Scylla du Coudray walked silently down the hall, back to her vigil over the child that could be his. _Or not._

*

The private hospital room was badly lit, the blip of the heart monitor the only sound to accompany Saben's rasping breath. Her shrinking figure wrapped in highly starched bed clothes, pulled tight over her distended belly, her face was damp, pale, slowly being relieved of the blush of life.

Her eyelids suddenly fluttered, thin slits of brown seeking through the dim lights. She saw Tobias but her eyes moved to the darkness beyond him. "You've been here everyday?" Her voice was a dull rasp that sounded so unlike herself.

Tears flowed freely from Tobias' eyes. He nodded and squeezed her fingers against his lips.

"You have to let me go."

He shook his head, no.

Saben passed into an exhausted drug-induced sleep, she had been delirious, eyes fluttering as she had been wheeled from one room to the next, not knowing if she had safely delivered her baby, not having seen the baby but had only heard the phantoms of it's first squeals.

After they had tried to suffocate her with plastic masks, needles jabbing her veins, invading her insides with such crude indelicacy but she could not resist, as she was spread before them like a sacrifice.

Tobias pressed a hand to the side of her face, whispering softly by her ear. "We have a son, Sabe. He's beautiful-"

An uneasy breath wheezed passed her lips, Saben felt as if she were trapped in her own body, finely attuned to her organs that were slowly shutting down.

Tobias had been seated beside her for hours, holding onto her limp head, head bowed, too exhausted to whisper prayers. "You're her soul mate for Hecate's sake." He hissed, having deduced Night Lord Cebren's presence without having to ask.

The vampire stood at the farthest side of the room, as if afraid to go near the pallid figure in the bed. Veiled in shadows, his eyes glowed like twin stars in the night, he turned his intense stare to Tobias only momentarily.

"She's going to die." Tobias whispered.

The vampire didn't move but the invisible tied of energies that danced around him turned the shades of the room darker, the atmosphere a little colder. Tobias next breath was visible in a cloud of smoke.

"Do it." Tobias said.

The vampire's voice was bland. "You don't know what you're saying."

"If you loved her you would do it." He turned bright eyes toward him.

More silence.

The vampire could not deny with any true confidence that he loved the sickly girl lying on the bed. It was a dangerous thing to even think upon. It was true enough their souls were bound, a terrible cord that was choking them both even now and he could see her death clearly than she could.

"I-"

There was a sharp knock on the door slicing through the vampire's thoughts, cutting off his voice at a single word, Tobias rose from his seat and went to answer, he murmured to the person beyond the door and left the room closing the door behind him.

The vampire moved like liquid rippling out of the darkness, to sit in the chair beside Saben's bed. He slowly took hold of her cold, sweaty hand, and was struck by the cold grip of death slowly possessing her organs and the perverse thrill of contact.

"You stupid little girl," he said affectionately and touched her cheek.

Her eyelids fluttered open almost instantly as if he had commanded her to wake from her sleep and she whispered. "Abberline." Because you don't like to be called Cebren, _the name your mother gave you in spite of a father who forced you upon her like a curse…_

He lay his lips against the knuckles of one hand as her thoughts bombarded his mind. "You know what I have to do now, Saben Mariley Frost."

He bent down and lay his mouth upon her lips for a kiss. His mouth was soft whilst her mouth felt hard, the skin on her lips cracked and stiff, his tongue tasted her lip which had started to bleed.

Saben seemed to sigh as she disappeared in flight behind her closed lids, she was rushing toward a great and terrible darkness where stars emerged like pinpricks in fabric. Her lungs filled with too much air, her eyes wet with the rush of flying and then suddenly she was falling, she felt as if she had been flung through a narrow tunnel, it became harder and harder to breath, the battering pressure of the wind making her body clench in unimaginable pain until she had stopped breathing altogether.

She was dead, surely she was, and she was cast down speeding toward Elysium, left reaching toward a reflection of stars that were Abberline's eyes.

It felt as if she spent years reaching toward them, the cord that lead out from within herself, anchoring her in the nothingness and then her eyes opened, greeted by the crystal edges of a new old world.

"I'm alive?" Whispered in wonderment. Had it all been a dream? Her words sounded as if they had been voice by a stranger.

She saw Abberline, sullen and silent at the back of the room and Tobias was beside her, mystified. She reached a hand that felt as delicate as glass to her stomach, she felt no swell of pregnancy: just flat skin that was cold beneath her fingers.

Her eyes could focus with perfect and startling clarity, she could smell the tears before they materialised on Tobias' face, she could perfectly sense the salt and sweat of grief.

Things were different. The world had changed but she couldn't place how. "What have you done?" She whispered.

"We couldn't do anything else." Tobias replied reaching for her but she evaded his touch. Her eyes were set on Abberline's face, the unhappy tightness about his mouth, the coldness of his eyes. Eyes that she had dreamed about when falling to the underworld.

There was no sense of apology in him as there had been in Tobias, just the simmering and unspoken anger that burnt her from where she lay. She was sensitive to him like a newborn, her gums hurt, her body picking up pace as she began to stir from the bed.

"Get out of here." Abberline said softly and Tobias could not protest as he saw the light of the vampire ignite in Saben's eyes.

"What have you done?" She repeated.

"It was the only thing left to save you. You died." Abberline said gently. She knew it was true but didn't know what to say, still wondering if she were in heaven or hell. "Things will be different now. They'll never be the same again. You will feel more acutely-"

She closed her eyes and knew that instant what had befallen her. "I never wanted to be like you." She said softly, calmly, though panic dashed through her making her body sing with tension.

He approached her cautiously and perched on the edge of the bed, slowly reaching for her hand. She drew her hand away before their skin could touch. "You selfish son of a bitch."

He shrugged and the next instant he had hold of her, one hand in her hair, pulling her head back, he slipped a finger into her mouth to gently prod at her gums. His eyes inspecting her eyes for signs of rot. He knew not everyone was suited to take the Blood, not everyone could survive it.

"We will have to leave this place tonight." He said.

"No, what about Lark?"

Abberline shook his head, no.

Rage built so easily inside of Saben, it was as if the most base and simplest emotions could be summoned in an instant. She was so convinced by the emotion, possessed by it she felt the painful extensions of her canines, like a virgin being breached. She lunged forward, Abberline's blood filled her mouth.

*

Saben stepped up to the glass and peered at the wrinkled and pruned baby flesh beyond. In the distance without a sound the child slept so soft and peaceful she felt her heart expand. Lark. Her baby. She knew it was hers without having to ask or read the bracelet wrapped around his wrist.

She pressed her hand to the glass and the baby began to stir as if he knew she was there.

A silver haired nurse walked past her and opened the door a crack to check inside. The smell of new babies, of old blood and disinfectant wafted toward her senses and her eyelids fluttered and she was swaying on the current of the heady perfume. She was overwhelmed, leaning on the glass to help her stay on her feet.

Then she heard it, the fast ticking of Lark's heart suddenly pounding in her own throat, the scent of his new flesh and heat of his blood stirring an alien desire in her. Her stomach cramped. Her insides were taken over by a terrible emptiness and hunger. The babies were joined in a chorus of crying now but not Lark. Not Lark.

"Are you all right?" The nurse appeared at her shoulder, grasping her arm to help her stand but Saben couldn't bare it, she pushed the woman hard.

Trembling, and afraid of her own self she knew she had to get out or she'd do something much worse. Her eyes bright, her mouth a gash of blood and sharp teeth. She ran. Fast and crawling and however she could move to get away and save her son's life.

*

Tobias held the baby as if he were the most delicate creature on the earth. The weight of his limbs, the warmth of his body was new and incredible to the witch. The baby gurgled and stared up at him with eyes as brown as his mother's but the rest was Tobias, unmistakable.

He was taking the baby to his mother, they would be united as a family, such were his tender feelings as he swung open the door and the insides were dark. The stench of copper blood was almost overpowering and the baby began to struggle and cry in his arms.

Tobias found the vampire on the far side of the room, alive but bleeding heavily from the throat, his mouth working in paroxysm, unable to speak yet, unable to move. Saben was gone. The starch bed linen was stretched across the floor and the words "His Name Is Lark" scrawled in blood.


	18. Chapter 17

Seventeen

Four Year Later

Tobias squinted at his reflection, trying to straightened his tie, his handsome stared steadily back at him. His blue eyes seemed to glow, his mouth was set stubborn and firm. His face had matured in four years, the subtle lines of responsibility were etched into his face marking him as a wiser man than he used to be.

"Is anything wrong, Toby?"

He turned to find Blaise Harman fasting the clasp of the Isis stone about her neck, it settled brilliant red, radiating a kaleidoscope of blood red light across her red silk dress. "You look…wonderful." He sighed.

She spun in a circle to show him the dress. "I hope it's fitting."

Blaise Harman always knew exactly what to wear, how to act, how to move. Each move carefully calculated to show her off to her best advantage. The dress showed her flawless creamy pale skin, not a mark, no scars, no ink. "It's perfect."

She put her arm through his and tugged him toward the door and the limo that waited outside. "We should go."

The air was static and cold but it could not stop the droves of impeccable dressed people attend the Descourdres observatory and adjoining grand hall. Sumptuously decorated in a baroque style, filigree and gold leaf at every wall only served to illuminate the crowd.

Witches from the far reaches of the continent had journeyed to gather and bear witness to the spectacle. Whilst most affairs stayed intimate and only amongst witch kind, tonight was a pledge between witch-kind and new allies in the Day.

On this Night of unusual coldness, a boy of no more than four years would become the heir, the link between his people and the Day. But…"He's not ready." Tobias whispered stroking his son's soft downy hair away from his forehead.

The boy was asleep, peaceful, still. He looked every inch like his father save for his eyes. His eyes would always be hers.

"You'll wake him up." Blaise admonished softly gently moving Tobias' hand away from the boys head.

"It'll be okay, you'll see. It's in his blood." Blaise comforted though her words were a bitter, barbed reminder. Blood. He shook his head and stared out of the window. Tobias kept a secret, enveloped close to his heart only one other person knew and that was Blaise. No one else could possibly come to know that his son was human.

Blaise squeezed her hand as if she could ease his nerves.

The limo pulled up some distance from the entrance where sober looking security guards lined the narrow path toward the observatory. It was a formality but it made Tobias uneasy.

Blaise gently picked up the child in her arms without waking the boy and began to walk toward the path. Tobias hesitated and watched the two from behind but from the corner of his eye he caught the shadow flitter through the outer darkness and was compelled to approach it. His pulse began to race as he deduced that it was no mere animal running through the underbrush.

"Come into the light." He demanded.

A shapely figure materialised from the foliage. The woman was a vision in a gown glittering with Swarovski diamonds and sapphire. The sapphire were as hard and icy as her eyes that seemed to glow almost manically.

"Celsia Verain." She extended a manicured hand in greeting but he ignored it. "A pleasure, my Lord. I've come to offer congratulations. Congratulations to both you and your precious little boy."

Celsia Verain made him feel cold, it was an icy sensation that marched up his skin bringing his hair to stand, his body into small tremors. He took a step back holding up a hand that began to crackle with the promise of witch fire.

"The Night World is not invited." Tobias said firmly.

Celsia smiled showing perfectly white fangs. "You shouldn't be so exclusive with your circle of acquaintances, Lord Tobias."

"Leave now or I'll remove you by force."

Celsia's eyes settled briefly on the guards in the distance, they were beginning to come to the realisation that Tobias dallied in the shrubbery. A new smile curved her glossy lips, if she had managed to come this far into the compound surely she had already dealt with a score of security guards but still she remained unflustered and impeccable.

Orange flame lit Tobias' fingertips and it thwarted her chill instantly. "Leave."

She offered an elegant bow. "As you wish, my Lord."

Tobias turned his back and walked toward the entrance where his family stood waiting. He remained confident that Celsia would obey his instruction, for such was the arrogance a Lord of the Night should display when giving such a command.

Celsia sunk back into the darkness but stayed to watch him walk away. Her eyes narrowed into angry blue slits.

"Celsia?"

"Oh I thought you'd never come." Celsia turned to greet her companion with a frosty smile. "There he is, ripe for the picking."

Her companion watched Tobias' back, as it became distant and disappeared altogether through the steel walls of the observatory. The woman's brown eyes were intense but her expression belied not one emotion.

"You can leave now." She said softly.

Celsia stood and moved too quick for the human eye suddenly standing intimately close to her, her icy fingertips brushing her cheek, her lips, and then closer around her throat like an iron vice. "Don't be too long, love."

The companion turned her face toward Celsia where she lay a kiss on her cheek. "I won't be too long." She promised.

*

The woman dressed in black appeared at the fringe of the crowd. A crowd buzzing with much excitement and heady swirls of different flavoured magics. The woman slipped her way between the bodies without a sound.

A sprightly witch noticed her first and stepped forward to catch her eye. "That's a gorgeous dress you're wearing." The light seemed to gleam impossibly from the silver-blond hair and wide lavender eyes but the woman had no time to stop and offer thanks.

A dark haired girl glared at her from across the floor.

The woman forged on through the crowd, but now people were looking, glittering eyes turned to her with keen interest and curiosity. She had not been seen before, nor had she been announced at the door. Was she Day, Twilight, Midnight? She could be all that and more.

The lights suddenly dimmed and the curtains to the stage parted to reveal a clutch of People. Witch light lit the stage in a romantic glow, she recognised Thierry Descourdres instantly but knew little about the petite blond girl at his side. They began to talk, delivering a well practised speech to which the woman heard not a word.

Her eyes were fixed to the stage and in particular one person standing on the stage.

Tobias noticed her first, almost at the front of the crowd, standing out for she wore a stunning black dress. He wavered mid-speech, his eyes stuck to her, sucking in the impossible sight of a phantom. Her hair the colour of deep dark earth, her skin glowing, her eyes brown and now mutating to gleaming molten gold.

The rest of the gathered followed his gaze and whispers began to rise.

"Saben?" Tobias words dissolved into a startled breath until he gathered himself to talk. "I didn't think I'd ever see you again." He took an involuntary step forward, forgetting the People behind him mystified by the scene before them.

Saben Mariely Frost's eyes were not on Toby but fixed to the child Blaise had scooped up protectively in her arms as if to shield him from the sight of the woman.

"Lark?" Her voice was sweet music.

"His name is Daniel." Tobias said gently.

The light in her eyes turned menacing and she looked up at Blaise and back to Tobias. Energy like heat seemed to gather around her as her anger heightened. Security were discreetly making their way toward the vampire.

"Why have you come back?" Blaise asked, her voice was trembling but she covered the little boy's eyes with her hand so he could not see the expression on the woman's face.

"Things are different now," Tobias continued, taking another step toward her, his hands held up in a gesture of peace. Saben did not feel peaceful. "You have to leave." Though he looked in two minds about wanting her to leave.

Outrage had been steadily building, fury possessed her like fire in the blood. Saben looked from Tobias to the boy. Her son. Her mouth fell open and the tips of her fangs rested gently on her lip. Her eyes shone metallic and dangerous but were now shining with tears. Daniel began to sob and struggle in Blaise's grip and Blaise began to bark orders.

People began to step back creating space around the vampire.

Security grasped her by the wrists.


	19. Chapter 18

Eighteen

Saben was locked in a room expensively decorated with authentic Egyptian silk curtains and carpets. There was a Greek tapestry on the wall, bright threads depicting the arrival of Aphrodite to the shore. She could smell their authenticity, the whiff of travel dirt and rotting threads.

Two black suited security guards stood like severe pillars. They had no expression, their eyes veiled by shades. Saben stared at them briefly but knew they would give nothing away.

She sat, her back straight, her eyes roving the inside of the room with only distant thought of Celsia Verain waiting for her to return.

"Too many secrets." She whispered aloud and one vampire arched a dark brow.

She was haunted by the sight of the child, her son, a stranger to her with a name she didn't know. A child no one knew was conceived nor birthed. Her hands closed into fists but she remained seated, her ire receding to an acute sadness.

A door opened and a slip of a woman appeared, murmuring something to the guards who with an uneasy set to their mouths exited the room to guard it from the outside.

Saben stared at the woman, Thea Harman hadn't changed much in the years they had last seen one another. The witch eyes gleamed as if she were holding back tears. "You came back." There was no mistaking the venom in her voice.

"Evidently." Saben murmured.

"Why?"

"I will speak to Lord Descourdres alone on that matter." She said.

"Where have you been, can you tell me that at least?"

Saben shook her head from side to side. The years flashed through her mind, a glorious, bloody bright blur and she gripped the arm rests.

"We thought you'd been abducted or worse."

Saben could imagine the scene left behind at the safe house she had been concealed in for months. Geoff Deckard a rotting corpse on the floor impaled by a broken chair leg, blood and amniotic fluid greasing the floors, signs of a struggle and no Saben to be found.

"What could be worse than this?" She asked with a cold smile, revealing her fangs, eyes starting to glow with unearthly magic.

Thea's mouth clamped shut, her fingers uncurled from their indignant fists. "What happened to your baby?"

Saben's eyes slipped from Thea's fair face to the floor, she swallowed passed a lump forming thick in her throat. "My baby's gone."

*

"Let's start from the beginning shall we?"

Saben was sat in front of Thierry Descourdres, the first bitten vampire recorded in the histories of the Night. He was everything one could imagine of a vampire, beautiful to behold, with dark eyes drenched in the sorrows of more than one thousand lifetimes. Saben could feel his Power, something magnetic and compelling , though it was carefully controlled.

She shook her head in a non committal way. "I can only tell you what I know and it's not very much."

"We were in New York, it was an intimate show just twenty People called by a client who remained nameless." Saben remembered the night vividly because it was the first night back on the stage cradling a mic with a band surrounding her like armour.

The lights were ghostly, roaming the darkness, vampire eyes reflecting back at her and they were hungry. Her eyes had slipped to Celsia's face, her expression was cool as she face the crowd, wearing her bass guitar with a predatory grace, plucking strings with speed and precision.

The set was fast, furious, the crowd was not the usual mix of gutter punks, hardcore and metal heads. Young men and women in designer suits and couture dresses, cruel smiles and vicious glints in their eyes. An elite had been gathered but Saben had no interest in questioning why or who by.

Afterwards she had made her way to the bar, the bartender, Willie hadn't liked how young she looked as he'd placed a shot glass in front of her. Her throat no longer felt raw, there was no need to dry heave and pop pills to guide her into a dreamless sleep. She didn't dream anymore.

She was starting from scratch with a new set of pipes. It was the sound of celestial choirs, reaching notes a human could never known have existed. Profound, extreme, ecstatic vocals that dug deep and reached high. Drowning herself in sound and then alcohol.

"More." She waved absently at Willie.

She didn't turn to see who spoke but felt the presence of two vampires at her back.

"…thinking to lure us with blood feasts and circus acts." One vampire hissed.

"It's an interesting proposition." The other purred.

"To defer loyalty to Mezereon?"

"Consider it, Janeczek."

"Bah, consider."

"You want to be on the winning side when the end comes."

"Mezereon is not a side."

There was a chuckle.

"I must confess I am tempted, he always has been the most excellent host."

"Yes and I hear he has the best taste in-"

Saben's blood had run cold as the conversation unfolded and this she could not repeat to Lord Descourdres.

Mezereon had no other name, he was prolific in the old world, a meat trader, manager of the most elaborate flesh markets the Night had ever known. He traded in both human and Night World flesh, a lead supplier to vampire enclaves and darker circles. "We were paid, we left, there was nothing more after that except..."

"Yes?" Descourdres prompted.

She licked her lips thinking of a way to phrase her words. "Do you read the papers, my Lord?"

"Sometimes."

She reached into the cleavage of her dress, the lone vampire guard standing at her shoulder began to move but Thierry stopped him with the merest shake of his head. She slapped a sheaf of paper clippings on the desk. "Emil Montague was taken from his crib one week after I left that show, a few days late Safi and Sasi Keeping were taken from the courtyard of their house. There's more, each of them connected with the Night, each of them have witch blood."

"And you think this is Mezereon's work?"

"Certain."

Thierry Descourdres was not without suspicion but his interest was certainly piqued. "Forgive me, it's a strange thing to hear. Mezereon has never been a political figure and no trader would brazenly abduct children for the markets."

Saben shrugged. "I don't know shit about your vampire politics or subtleties, my Lord."

"I will take this information under advice."

Saben almost jumped up from her chair. "I want a guarantee."

Thierry's eyes flashed.

"I want you to guarantee the safety of-."

"I assure you Ms Frost, it's in my best interest to ensure every ally of the Day is protected."

She sat back in her chair and tried to calm her seething nerves. She had to know Lark was safe. She had to know that he would be protected.

"You used to be under our protection, what have you been doing since?" He asked though what he was really asking was how deep had she sunk into the Night, the vampires, the Council?

"Whatever I had to, to survive." She replied.

"And Celsia Verain?" Thierry leant forward dangerously. "I don't take kindly to you bringing enemies to my home."

"Verain is of no consequence to you." She said. "She's not a threat."

"And you can guarantee that?"

"There's nothing set in stone, my Lord." She conceded with a cold smile that didn't reach her eyes. "She has no stake in this."

"We'll have to consider what you've said, Saben." Thierry said and that was indication the suit to escort her away. "Take her to the south apartments." And make sure she stays there, was added silently though Saben could clearly hear him.

She allowed herself to be guided by the suit toward the south apartments but had no intention of staying there.

Charlie stood at the bottom of the hall, he stood as if he had been waiting for her to emerge from the office. He had been dressed for the ceremony but now his tie had been taken off, his collar was crooked. His eyes were red with emotion and when he met her eyes she could see the shiny veil of tears. "I thought you were-"

"I am." _Dead_, that is, she thought with a bitter smile.

"What happened?"

"We have orders, Charlie." The suit said and marched Saben past her old friend.

She was escorted down the staircase she found Blaise Harman waiting at the bottom.

Saben paused on the last step to take in the sight of the witch who was as glorious as a goddess in her fury, without preamble Blaise struck her hard about the face. "You stay away from my family." Hissed before turning her back to leave.

"What was that about?" The suit asked softly but Saben shook her head as if she didn't have a clue.


	20. Chapter 19

Nineteen

Saben paced up and down in the dimly lit interrogation room in the South Apartments, things were decidedly less lavish in this end of Thierry's indomitable mansion. The room was dimly lit with one steel table and two chairs to match.

Perched on the edge of the icy table, she waited in silence for Tobias to come, she knew he would. He couldn't help himself. He would come alone, to avoid wider confrontation, he would speak softly, he would be wracked with regret…She could feel him drawing closer, could see it in her mind's eye: a grey cloud fraught with emotion.

Her cheek still thundered with the memory of Blaise Harman's slap, and the witch's exquisitely set features flushed with rage.

There was a polite knock at the door.

She turned at the same instant Tobias slammed the door behind him. "What the hell are you doing here?"

She appeared unmoved but she could not deny the shock that rippled through her at the harsh sound of his voice: the same shameless venom as Blaise. She did not reply at first, she could not find the words to express her fury so she swallowed it down into the pit of her stomach.

"Daniel?" She asked.

His expression softened and he was the Tobias she remembered, making love by witch light. She could see his face marked by the passing of years, the shadow across his cornflower blue eyes, the bearing of too many secrets. "It was my father's name." He explained.

She nodded and turned her face away to hide the flash of emotion on her face. "I knew a Daniel once, he was an asshole." She felt overwhelming sensations, rage, shame, love, lust, regret…

He stared at her profile as if she were a phantom come to life though he didn't move closer, even though his limbs trembled with the need.

They stood in silence and eventually, unable to resist, his hand drifted out, his fingertips lightly brushed her arm, goose bumps rose on her skin and she moved as fast and precise as a snake, grasping his wrist with a vice grip. "I think your girl friend's done enough of that for one night."

"She's my wife."

"And Daniel is the fruit of your marriage, the apple of his mother's eye?" She said with a bitter laugh. She was disturbed at how easily she had been written out of her own flesh and blood's life.

"Saben."

She shook her head, no. She didn't want to hear any stitched together explanations or excuses it would only tempt her to violence. Tobias and Blaise must have been passing Lark off as their pureblood son. Heir to the Consul of witches.

"You left and you didn't come back, I thought you were dead-"

"Let's be perfectly clear, Toby." She prodded his chest hissing each word. "I'm dead because you killed me."

"That's not true." He whispered.

She stepped close to him, so close she could feel his hot breath on her face, the shivering line of his body, the heat of his skin and rhythm of his pulse. His mouth moved to form the syllables of her name but she was entranced by the beat of his blood. "No?" She asked ever so softly.

He was mesmerised by her eyes, by the stark beauty of her face, she had truly been transformed. She wasn't the same as she had been now he felt danger radiating from her just, an icy cold chill of warning that she could take his life.

"You didn't come here to argue, Sabe." Tobias said softly.

Saben felt her fangs touch her lower lip, lust rose, for flesh, for blood. It seemed to dull the edges of the world, her vision receding to encompass Tobias alone.

"Why did you come?"

She reached up and touched his hair, Lark had hair just like his father, the shape of his face would refine into Tobias' too. She brushed her lips, the hardness of her teeth against his mouth. She could taste his beating heart through his tongue as hers slithered to touch his.

She was overwhelmed by the warmth of him and closed her eyes to share a long, lingering kiss.

*

"You helped her get away?" Blaise Harman asked in disbelief.

"Get away?" Tobias asked appalled. "She's not a criminal, Blaise."

"No?"

He shook his head, no and watched some of her anger desert her. "Did she come to take him?" She asked softly, belying her true fear to have it all taken away from her. "She can't do that, can she?"

Tobias shrugged, he truly didn't know. "I don't think so."

"No." Thierry Descourdres interrupted, he had been sitting behind his desk watching the two witches exchange. "She came with some valuable information."

"So now she's one of the fold?" Blaise hissed.

"Her loyalties are uncertain, Blaise." Thierry said gently. "We will not count her as an ally, her story will have to be checked, an investigation is already underway but it is an interesting theory."

"What was her story, my lord?" Tobias asked.

Thierry recounted a version of what Saben had said and all the while Blaise's expression of displeasure deepened whilst Tobias eyes grew wide with shock. "Daniel's in danger?" He asked.

"I'm sure you won't mind the impertinence but I've already made arrangements to have him watched." Thierry said. "If Ms Frost's story holds water-"

"I shouldn't have let her go." Tobias interrupted with a faint whisper.

"Tobias?" Blaise reached a hand but he evaded her touch.

He stood up, Saben's kiss still scorching his mouth, his cheeks flooded with colour with the memory. He mumbled some excuse to leave and moved as if caught in a daze. The more he moved the more his head filled with thoughts and a icy wedge of fear lodged between his lungs.

He was heading towards his son, his leisurely pace suddenly quickening into a jog and then a sprint.

He wrenched open the door to reveal Daniel sitting in his nanny's lap whilst she read him a story. Scylla de Coudray eyes were large, her mouth open on the last word she had read and posture filled with dread.

Relief swept through Tobias, he half collapsed against the door. Daniel's head turned, brown eyes sparkling and his mouth turned up into a smile.


	21. Chapter 20

Twenty

"I thought you'd never come." Celsia cool voice was at her shoulder.

Saben had her face turned to the mic, resolved not to turn and betray any emotion to the vampire. She could still feel the phantom of Tobias mouth, the taste of his heartbeat through his swollen tongue, it made her feel dizzy.

"How did it go?"

"My…he's safe-"

"And we will not be returning to see him again I trust."

Saben's mouth opened and closed unable to make that promise.

"That life is lost to you now, Saben, you are vampire now."

"Don't you think I know that?" She asked softly.

She glanced behind her shoulder to see Celsia's blond brow arched.

The guitar player and drummer appeared, acknowledging the ladies with nods of their head. Celsia had found them from obscurity. Timeus had played strings since his Turning, Celsia liked to boast he played in the Orphic temples of Lesbos, progeny of the fallen god himself but Saben had her doubts.

She found it hard to believe that people simply sprouted from the sands or from a severed head but then she had not always believed vampires a reality.

Victor was young but even to Saben eighty years was sixty years too old for how he looked. Victor was silent, they had barely exchanged words but he played his kit with a speed and accuracy that frightened her.

The band had an awful kind of efficiency to it that never quite seemed to fit with Saben's erratic and organic song writing.

"We will talk later." Celsia said with a cold smile.

Saben's jaw clenched at the idea.

The club, Ad Mortem was packed to the rafters that night.

Saben stood with the lights focused on her, painful to her sensitive eyes and the crowd would see those lights thrown back at them from the pools of her eyes like an animal's.

She put the mic to her lips, she didn't need it but it felt good to be there again. To work out the aggression through throat shredding screams, reaching the heavens with her fury. She lead the band with screams more profound than when she had been human.

Eyes glowed in the dark and she knew each and every face that stared back, People and their human guests tearing at each other in a crowd that had become a vile bucket of writhing flesh. She commanded them truly with a magic of her own: violence, lust, silence.

Celsia cast a particular look her way. Worried. Worried she'd lose it. Saben gave one hundred and ten percent. She was draining her body of all that it had as if she were that human girl again.

There was no softness left in her voice nor her heart. Her illusions had been cruelly shattered. She shouldn't have gone back but she had to see it for herself. Tobias. Lark…Daniel. Pain, fury, relief flowed from her, through her voice and into the crowd…

After the set .Saben sat alone on the roof of the building staring into nothingness and waiting for the sun to come up.

She wanted to escape Celsia, avoid the immanent talk. The talk of leaving her past behind. She closed her eyes for an instant and horrific images tinged in blood scarred the back of her eyelids.

"It's been a while."

She opened her eyes, squinting to see who had spoken, she raised a hand to shield her eyes to find Abberline silhouetted against the new day. Her heart seemed to spasm to life for a moment, the cord that bound them wound tight about her throat. He was beautiful. She was weak. Her false breath released in a sigh. "Far too long."

She should have known he'd come, she should have read it from Celsia's tone. Her insistence that she be in Ad Mortem that night. The worried looks cast in her direction. Saben clenched her fists and turned her face away from Abberline's sight.

"How's your throat?" He asked.

"Not as raw as yours." She mumbled.

He smiled touching the old wound.

"Why are you here?"

"I was…concerned."

She snorted indelicately but her throat closed, thick with the threat of tears of anger. She had not seen him in years, instead he had sent Celsia to find her as the madness consumed her over the first few weeks.

She could remember with startling clarity the first victim she had taken, indelicately feasting on his skin, bathing in his blood, collapsed on the corpse unable to move, clinging to him like a junkie.

Saben rushed at Abberline with vampiric speed and slapped him hard across the cheek. He remained as cold as stone, a dark eyebrow raising in enquiry.

"Come down off the roof, the sun is too bright." He said as if she hadn't hit him at all, as if his skin wasn't zinging from the strange connection they shared.

He walked away and did not glance behind him to ensure she was following. She had no choice but to follow him. He lead her to a room sumptuously decorated. An office converted to a suite. Celsia was sprawled across a chaise longue. She was once again impeccably dressed in an expensive black suit looking untouched by the sweaty minions and stage lights of the show that had ended only a few hours ago.

Abberline stood by the window, staring out at the street.

Saben looked from one vampire to the other, eyes settling on Celsia. "An ambush?"

Celsia smiled.

"I was concerned." Abberline said with his back to her.

"You said that before."

"It's no less true." Celsia added.

"I don't need your commentary." Saben snapped.

Celsia smile froze on her lips and she turned her face away to hide her fury and offer the other two some kind of privacy.

"You can keep your concern. Why are you here?" Saben folded arms across her chest.

"The same reason you are." Abberline replied.

"I doubt that, daddy." She hissed, at first angry and then afraid, was he here for Lark?

Abberline didn't flinch he slowly turned to face her and his expression was unreadable. His electric blue eyes were startlingly bright and she felt dizzy in the vortex of his stare.

Celsia was angry, gently simmering between the two.

"Celsia, leave us." Abberline commanded without sparing a look.

She looked startled, her anger deepening but she obeyed.

Saben watched her leave. Celsia was a snake, dangerous, she liked to inflict pain and she had no doubt Saben would have a price to pay for this night. A breeze ran through the room that made Saben shiver.

"How have you been?" He asked, an empty hollow question from his lips.

"She reports my every move to you." There was nothing more he needed to known from her. He knew her every fibre from their link. Between the two he knew all, well almost. She sunk down onto the chaise, the fabric warm from when Celsia had been sitting.

He was suddenly in front of her, his hand wrapped around her wrist, squeezing too tight. She resisted seeing into him, tripping down the path of their chord that was tugging her near irresistibly to look. Pulled her hand away though his grip burnt her skin.

"It was a fling." She hissed between her teeth. "We slept together a few times, it doesn't make us married, it doesn't mean I belong to you." But she remembered his hot mouth, _Say it_.

The stubborn residue of her human self, fouled her speech and made her mouth ugly with hate. Typical of a human of this age, Abberline thought. To brush of the deep soul magic as if It were a tawdry fling and he wanted to throttle her, to force her to soften but he didn't move.

"You went to the Day?" He asked instead.

"I did."

He didn't seem happy, a crease formed at the corner of his mouth but his eyes were cold. No, he was not happy, not happy Celsia had allowed it. "You told them about Mezereon?"

She froze. _Yes_, she had told them everything she knew about Mezereon but had never reflected on the betrayal. She was of the Night, her loyalty to the people of the Night and she had told secrets to the Day. Of course there would be a penalty. She lifted her large eyes to him.

She licked her lips. "Maybe."

"You understand that was a mistake?"

"So what?" She whispered.

"Saben." His voice, her name. "You sold our secrets to the Day, do I need to ask why?"

She shook her head. She hadn't sold a thing, she had volunteered the information.

"Look at me."

She did. His instruction irresistible.

"Is he in any danger?" She asked.

"Yes." No lies. No point. Her eyes closed. "Celsia tells me that you've sworn it means nothing to you."

"Celsia hears what she wants to hear."

"You will leave this place and never come back, do you understand?"

Her temper flared, eyes glowing fiercely. "That's not fair."

"It's not supposed to be fair, sweet heart."

"And if I do come back?"

His eyes were electric. She could read the answer in his eyes: punishment, pain. She tore her eyes away, what use would punishing her be? She was numb. Her eyes said so. They had only been quickened momentarily in four years and it was by the sight of her son. She turned her face away completely and could still offer no promises.

"You do not want to fuck with Mezereon, or test the boundaries of the Night." Abberline said gently.

"Why are you telling me this?"

"Because."

She put her head in her hands. She could leave it and let her son be the victim of Mezereon, child snatcher. She could go guns blazing and reveal her son's true identity which would only damage his reputation and send it on a downward spiral. She could try and save her son to be punished by the Night, executed and maybe her son with her. There seemed no way out.

"Abberline, wait."

He stood at the threshold, glancing behind his shoulder.

She was going to say something, a secret perhaps but decided against it. "Why did you lie to the Elders?" He went absolutely still. "Why did you tell them Celsia Turned me?"

"Isn't that obvious, Saben?" He replied and suddenly altogether disappeared from sight.

*

"So?" Celsia asked.

She leant beneath the awning of Ad Mortem as Abberline stepped outside, he pulled up his collar and pulled out a cigarette.

"Filthy habit that." She said.

He shrugged. "It comforts me from time to time."

"I know." She smiled and snatched the cig from his lips and sucked on it. "Filthy fucking thing."

"You'll keep an eye on her." He said.

"I always do." She said from between her teeth and chucked the cigarette to the floor and ground the butt out beneath her heel.

"Did you see the boy?" Abberline asked softly without sparing a glance in her direction.

Celsia shook her head, no.

"She'll try to run." He said.

"I know."

"Keep an eye on her."

"I always do." She repeated and watched him walk away.$


	22. Chapter 21

Twenty-One

Saben could smell it, smoke, grime and iron seeping through the large windows and deeper beneath that the warm sweet and sour taste of humankind. It was a maddening stench, it called to her, it commanded her appetites even when her mind wandered.

She stood with arms wrapped around herself, watching the spread of the city below from Abberline's pent house.

It was cold, empty, she pushed air from her lungs and it misted before her eyes, a mockery. She didn't need to breath. Didn't need much to survive. Except…except for blood.

"I truly don't understand it." Celsia said her steps slow and deliberate, oozing sexuality and predatory danger. It seemed her natural state, to seduce and deceive because her true desire was to destroy.

Saben lifted her eyes to the vampire's reflection, a ghostly pale image beside her own

She was hypnotised by her snaking hips. "You can no longer conceive, no longer grow old and ugly, no more infections, no more pain...He gave you a gift."

_I could have done without his gifts_, Saben thought to herself. Even as the words formed in her mind Celsia's hand closed around her throat and she was off balance, leaning on Celsia's lean body. "I should rip your throat out you ungrateful child, put us both out of our misery." She whispered.

Saben shut her eyes, they were both trapped in an impossible situation because Celsia loved Abberline, was blindly devoted to him and had been for centuries but Saben…Saben held his soul in her palms.

Celsia put a hand across her jaw, turning her head to one side to lay a kiss on her mouth. "No more tricks, no more treats Saben Frost." Celsia said releasing her suddenly and heading for the door. "I will not be so merciful next time."

Saben put a hand to her lips, she could still feel the ice of Celsia's mouth.

She listened to the sound of Celsia's heels retreat and moving silently in soft soled Converse Saben slipped onto the narrow balcony to be greeted by the pungent city air.

She descended into the city streets, climbed down the side of the building like an animal and now had her hood pulled up to disguise her face, hands fisted in the bottom of her pockets. She wandered aimlessly, much as she had done a fateful six years before when Abberline had saved her life and in the same instant doomed her for eternity.

The thought of Abberline made her throat go tight. She could not deny the awful swirl of emotion that rose at thoughts of him, but how much were her own and how many spurned by the cord that strangled them both, she did not know.

There was a tightness in her chest, an ache where her heart used to beat, she could feel things that were not her own, these things that would forever twist and knot in her chest. It was a terrible knowledge that she belonged to him utterly.

_Say it. Say it._

_I belong to you._

Lost in these thoughts she didn't notice the people slither out of the shadows and descend upon her, didn't sense them until she felt them seize her, an iron clamp grip on either arm. A bag was pulled over her face, wool fibres scratching her sensitive skin, blinding her, dulling her senses and she didn't resist.

She was gently guided to a van, she knew it, had spent half her life in them, her skin rumbled with the growl of the engine. She was in the back of the van, in the hollow of the beast, she kicked the side of it and a soft voice advised her to be calm.

Several hours later the van pulled to an abrupt stop, she listened to the soft footfalls outside as others gathered. She was guided outside, surrounded on all sides by strangers, the bag interrupting her senses. She was lead on a complicated series of paths until she was forced to sit and her hands were cuffed to the cool armrests of a steel chair.

The bag was pulled off her face and her vision was filled by the immaculate vision of Blaise Harman. Saben blinked. Expressionless.

She recognised the South Apartments, the bland room with standardised table and two chairs, the faint smell of antiseptic and static of discreet cameras.

Then she was distracted by Blaise's perfume was as toxic as a spell, intimate and sickening. It made her think of Tobias, the lingering stench of Blaise's perfume on his skin, on his mouth in his breath as their lips had met…

"All you had to do was ask." She said around the taste of Blaise in her mouth.

Saben saw for just an instant the crimson flush of her cheeks and flare of her nostrils, Blaise's fury. "Where is he?" The witch asked in a bare whisper.

Saben looked to the blank spaces either side of her and shrugged.

Blaise's grey eyes were intense, her stare unforgiving.

"I don't know what you're talking about." Saben said evenly.

"It's written all over your face."

Saben smiled humourlessly. "I don't know what-"

Blaise slapped her. Hard. Hair had fallen into her eyes and she blinked giving into a sudden and all consuming anger. "I had no choice when he gave my son to you but you will not lay another hand on me. Things are different now, witch and I am not the same little girl you knew."

The emotion moved, a roiling darkness beneath the surface of her eyes. Blaise's face went through a series of emotions that ended in confusion, her lips trembled but they did not form a parting sentence. The witch strode out of the room, slamming the door behind her. Sealing Saben in alone.

Saben looked up at the camera. "Want to tell me what's going on?" She asked.

*

"What do you mean gone?" His tone was extraordinarily light, near expressionless, belying none of the emotion that flared in his eyes, electric blue spirals leading to the abyss of black pupils.

Celsia was poignantly aware of the effort Abberline was exerting but she was furious too. "Gone. I mean she's gone. Jumped out of the damned window."

"I warned you."

"I know."

"Scylla is dead."

Celsia eyebrow rose. "A pity."

"You know what this means." His lips twitched, briefly in a kind of smile and then he turned his eyes on her and Celsia flinched. "Find her."

"I didn't sign on to this House to be a babysitter."

Abberline was suddenly beside her, a hand clamped around her throat and Celsia's fangs touched her bottom lip and her mouth swamped with the taste of imminent violence. "That's exactly what you are and I will hold you personally responsible if anything happens to her."

*

Saben waited in silence. Silence only the dead could bring. She tried not to let her thoughts wander, Abberline's eyes were tattooed on the inside of her eye lids, his voice…punishments for betraying secrets.

Tobias walked in, his expression stern, the same quality of anger exude by Blaise, Blaise's perfume thick on his skin and back in her mouth.

"What-"

"Why, Saben?" He cut her off, his voice trembling with emotion. It struck a chord in her, stirred old feelings, provoked her human concern but she was not human anymore.

"Why is the sky blue, Tobias? Why are we here? Why? Why? Why?"

His hand curled into a fist but he resisted the temptation of violence, the same violent feeling that had caused Blaise to strike her about the face. Instead his fist connected with the table in a startling thud.

"Tell me what's going on." She whispered. Her soft voice slicing through layers of lava-hot grief and oily suspicion. His eyes flicked to hers, tears shivering there.

He licked his lips. "Daniel's gone."

"Gone where?" She asked stupidly.

"Taken, Saben, he was taken." His hands slithered up the table toward her, hesitating - thinking better of it - he took back his hand.

She was frozen. Tobias words gripping her like a great fist. Punishment for telling secrets. She closed her eyes and began to hate the world anew.

"Was it you?" Tobias pressed, trying to be gentle now, trying to coax her to an answer he wanted to hear.

Saben's eyes opened and he found them glowing, filled with a venomous light that made him squint. "How. Dare. You."

"Saben, my son has been taken-"

"He's my son." She hissed, fangs flashing like blades.

Tobias shook his head indeterminably. "Was it you, Saben?"

She was seething, her insides swollen, raw and bleeding. Her voice tumbled soft from her alien mouth. "Let me go, Toby."

He was mesmerised for a moment and shook his head as if to clear the spell she wove with her vampire magic. "I'm afraid I can't do that."

"You mean you won't."

"I'm not going to make the same mistake twice."

"Tobias." She hissed.

"No, Saben. If you had something to do with this, I'll never forgive you." He got up to leave, his features schooled once more to a stern mask.

"What are you going to do with me?" She asked, subtly tugging on the restraints that held her to the chair.

"That's not for me to decide."

"Hand me over to the Day?" She laughed and then with intense seriousness. "I had nothing to do with this, Tobias."

He shook his head sadly. "I'm sorry, I don't believe that."

"He's still my son."

"Not in the eyes of the Day or Night."

Bloody tears flooded her cheeks, the toxic feeling of betrayal hit her squarely and the keen hatred she had felt for Tobias emerged from the silt of her emotions.

Tobias closed the door behind him as he left. Without hesitation and wrenched her wrists from the chair, the cuffs did not break but the steel chair warped and split and she could stand. She headed for the door and collided with Tobias who had returned with a glass of water.

In a tangle of limbs they fell to the ground. "What are you doing?"

He struggled to pin her, to restrain her, to keep her in one place. She didn't have time for the struggle and he was not so very strong. She held him, pacified him, he slipped into unconsciousness before he could utter any damning words.

"I'll find him myself." She whispered to his unconscious body.

She stepped back into the room and stared at the camera with all venom and fury "You said you'd protect him you lying son of a bitch."


	23. Chapter 22

Twenty-Two

When Saben Frost had first become a vampire she had ran from the antiseptic blood soaked maternity ward that had been her tomb to the bitter soot and grime anonymity of the streets. She had run far away from the maddening scent of her son and the living blood beating through his newly formed body. Though she could not escape the ancient blood beating through hers.

The first few weeks were a blur. She fed on anyone, anything, mostly vagrants that were unfortunate enough to stumble upon her sleeping place. She wandered aimlessly by night. Hungered for oblivion. For a cure…

Pretending to sleep beneath a soggy piece of card board, ink of the logo bleeding and unrecognizable, she used it to block the rays of burning light. Celsia Verain stared down at her, mouth curled in distaste. "Here you are."

Saben shook her head gravely to clear the phantom of those memories.

She leant in the dark awning of a derelict store, waiting as the heat evaporated to the midnight chill.

A hulk of black leather hunched over the handles of a motorbike pulled up to the curb and gloved fingers peeled the black helmet from the head. Buddy Shenker or Shen as he liked to be known raked gloved fingers through the stiff black spikes of his hair, crude features drawn in a stern expression and he hadn't changed very much since she had first seen him a shadow behind Celsia as she scooped the new born Saben from the street.

"I must say I was surprised when you called, little girl." The werewolf smiled, a gold tooth winking in the rise of lamplight. Darkness lived behind his eyes, a wild, violent entity lurking in the depths. "It's been a long time."

She knew how to play the vampire game, slow smiles, pin prick points of fangs, intent for violence never too far from the surface. "You're the best, you shouldn't be surprised."

He climbed off his bike and stood beside her, taking shelter in the slim shadow of the awning and lit a cig. "So what does Verain want this time?" He asked, reams of smoke escaping his nostrils like ghostly tusks.

"Not Celsia. Me."

"You?" He laughed catching sight of her from the corner of his eye. A meat appraising look, a look that had weight, like fingertips prodding at her concealed parts. "What could you possibly want found? You're not old enough to have lost something."

Saben's expression was grave for a brief moment and then she forced a smile, it stretched painfully across her mouth. "I lost a little something, a gift for my Maker's Maker."

He nodded, sucking another mouthful of smoke. "Ah, that old bastard. I heard he was in town."

She didn't like the tone with which he said it, grit her teeth and relaxed her face. "It was a special little something that would have pleased him and it was snatched from under my nose."

His lips pursed. "Careless of you, little girl."

"I'm learning."

"Of course I'll help you find it."

"You'll be paid well." She said as an afterthought.

"I never doubted it."

She looked around her, eyes careful to consider every shadow, the scent and sound of each passer by. Strands of dark hair fell into her eyes and she raised a hand to brush the strands away, Shen's eyes were on the bruises on her slender wrist, an eyebrow raised. It had taken hours to work the hinges of the cuffs.

"One of your strange little games again, is it?"

She shook her head vaguely. "I don't want Celsia finding out about this-"

"Rivalry, eh?"

She smiled showing the tips of fangs. "Something like that."

"It's been too goddamn long since two sweet meats have fought over me." He sighed and held out a spare helmet. "Get on, little girl, lets go somewhere we can discuss this matter, somewhere a little more comfortable."

*

Tobias sat with an ice pack held to the swollen lump forming on his forehead and a splitting ache sat deep in the soft tissues of his brain. Blaise sat beside him her manicured nails drumming on the table before them whilst she stared into nothing. "It had to have been her." She murmured.

"Maybe she was right." Tobias sighed. "She came here to warn us."

"No. She took him." Blaise hissed utterly convicted of Saben Frost's guilt. "If she wanted to warn us she should have come earlier. Scylla is dead because of her and Daniel…Daniel…"

"That would be so very easy, wouldn't it?" Tobias laughed throwing the ice pack across the room.

"Toby?"

"Blaise. It's not right."

"Toby-"

"You should know the truth."

Blaise stared at him. "What do you mean? What truth?"

He shook his head, unable to meet her eyes, his mouth trembling with guilty laughter. "The night, Daniel was born, Saben didn't just leave…"

He told Blaise everything, taking hold of her hand and touching the diamond ring that marked her as his wife the same ring he had chosen for Saben Mariley Frost's hand all those years ago. He explained in soft tones how he had convinced the vampire to Turn her, the days they had concealed her in the private hospital bed using magic tricks to keep the humans away.

Blaise withdrew her hand, the ring burning on her skin now. He told her how Saben had woken one night as a vampire, how had he had found Lord Cebren with his throat slashed and the bloodied banner declaring Lark's name.

Tears rolled down Blaise's cheeks though she remained silent and patiently listening. All these years she had believed Saben had abandoned the child for another lover and Tobias had valiantly brought him up in the face of such betrayal. All lies.

She remembered Saben Frost's icy sad stare after every slap, after every bitter word and left her lips. Blaise put her face in her hands and her shoulders trembled. Crying. Crying because she was a fool. Crying because a mother would never know her son.

"Blaise?"

"You haven't stopped lying, have you?" She said tremulously and pulled yanked the ring from her finger and flung it toward him.

"Blaise, wait."

She was already on her feet and spun round with a mild expression on her face. "I'm going to find my…my son." She tried to sound firm, her hold on Daniel becoming weak, but she had raised him from a baby and it was Blaise he called mother. "I'm going to get him back myself."

Tobias stared at her, his eyes rimmed red from renewed grief and frustration. "We have to find Saben."

"And what good would that do? I'm surprised she hasn't come here to punish you herself."

"If we find Saben we'll find Daniel." He said firmly.

She looked at him, the diamond ring clutched in one fist. Her resolution to lay the blame squarely on Saben's shoulders had disappeared and an awful kind of sympathy reared up instead. She couldn't bare to look at Tobias an instant longer and nodded her head.

"And Tobias, his name is Lark."

*

Saben's heart was racing as she looked up at the human body tied with piping cord to the crudely put together crucifix. Brilliant bright blood ran in tantalizing rivulets down the creamy pale skin. The body was punctured with the impression of vampire mouths and Saben's fangs were fully exposed and she was drawn to the sight, the scent, the taste…

"Just a taste, girl." Shen winked, gold tooth glinting.

She put her hand on the death cold pale shin and lifted blood on her fingertips. She licked it from her hands and the blood sung in her mouth, a pure symphony. This was what it was to be a vampire. The blood.

Shen grabbed her arm hard and yanked her away. "Just a taste, I said. We have business."

She was disorientated and then furious because he had pulled her away from the feast suspended before her so beautifully horrific. The human's broken mouth, blood bubbling on the ragged edges of its lips, the last rasping breaths before death…

She closed her eyes. "Yes." She said and forced herself to focus.

"You're still too young, eh girl?" Shen laughed and guided her into another room leaving the crucified sacrifice to rot alone.

He led her to a small locker room where he dropped his helmet and hung his jacket. Wearing a muscle shirt to show off his incredibly large muscles, he pulled up a small stool and sat at the fold out table and took out another cigarette.

She stood watching him, her chest rising and falling with breath she didn't have to take. Trembling with the strength of desire for more than just a small taste of blood.

"So tell me what is it you want me to find?"

"A child."

He grunted. "I'm not into child meat myself, not enough to chew on."

Good. She thought, she didn't want to expose Daniel to Shen's appetites anyway all she needed was a way into Mezereon's confidence, his dens, his soirees. "I know who took my prize."

"You do, eh?" He smiled staring at the firefly end of his cigarette.

"Mezereon."

Shen's thick eyebrows rose. "Now that's a big name. A big order I think."

She sat opposite him taking his cigarette from his fingers and sucking on the stick. She blew smoke in his face. "You too little to take it on, Shen?"

He smiled, a dangerous, dark lurking kind of smile that said he shredded flesh between his teeth. "I can do it, princess, I'm just wondering if you can." He motioned toward the room, the tormenting stench of human blood that so easily distracted and ensorcelled her. "It's a dangerous game you want to play."

"This is not a game." She said and stubbed the cig on the table. "This is life or death."

"For your Maker's Maker?"

She thought of Abberline…Cebren, his face highlighted in her mind, his eyes so intense and yet beneath the alien danger of what he was, beneath the exterior as hard as diamonds he was the other half of her soul. "Yes." She said with a slight hiss.

"I can do it for you, girl. It'll take a bit of time, I think. Like I said Mezereon is no small order, even if I get you to his domain you will still have to find the meat and then you'll have to take it. Mezereon will kill you if he even imagines you will betray him."

She nodded. "I understand."

He laughed. "Good. Then let us talk about the matter of payment."


	24. Chapter 23

Twenty-Three

The leafless tree was bleached as pale as bone, gnarled branches reaching toward an unforgiving sun. A set of claw marks was scored deep into the dry bark. Summerlin was 'wolf territory.

The tree was only the first marker down the desert-dirt path that led to the gathering of shabby wooden houses. Bare wood as pale as the Summerlin tree, years spent beneath the full swathe of the sun.

Blaise moved slowly down the slender paths separating the houses, breezeless, soundless, deceptively deserted. She could smell the wild animal scent of suspicion, the musty scent of fur. She was not alone.

The growl of the bass reverberated through the house like a beast stalking behind the wooden walls. It was the last house on the block, a house in bad condition, stinking of human waste and underneath that the rotting of meat.

Blaise Harman covered her mouth and nose with a gloved hand as if it could stifle the stench.

She made her way up the splintered stair case to the porch, the broken down swing chair creaked on one chain.

She knocked on the flimsy door, ignoring the eyes that seemed glow from the dank doorways of the surrounding houses.

The door opened without much force and she stepped inside to escape the breath of the unforgiving desert heat. Inside was the heatrot stink of the abattoir, and she erupted into a series of coughs fighting not to gag.

"Hello?" Her voice hoarse, hesitant.

The bass had a thick meaty sound, crunching through the amp, far too loud for the rickety old house in Summerlin, far too loud for the middle of the morning. It was the sound of pain and urgency.

She pushed open doors with her feet, not wanting to touch or taint her fingers. "Charles?"

No reply just more chthonic sound. Eerie deep notes suspended like spells or the chorus of the underworld. She made it to the last door at the back of the house.

Charlie Barker's damp curls clung to his temples, his eyelids fluttered as he was dragged by the merciless groove, the grimy down tuned rhythms.

Blaise tapped the door open with her foot. "Charles?"

He was shocked from his moment of revelry, his eyes the blazing amber of an animal, his teeth sharper than they should be. Caught. His vision came into focus and Blaise Harman, a lotus amidst the silt of Summerlin.

He slid the bass to his back, his bare chest rising and falling as if he'd been running. The static hiss of the amp filled the silence between them.

Blaise's cool gray eyes appraising the room, collapsed mattress in one corner with sheets soaked through with sweat. The walls stripped bear save for CB ML forever scrawled as if in blood. His equipment was haphazardly strewn everywhere, the floor covered in tangles of cables, as thick as snakes.

"I can't help you." He said breathlessly.

Blaise's expression turned cold, her lips drawn together in a line. "I need to find my son. I need to find her."

"So you can string her up for kidnap?" He growled. "I don't think so."

Werewolves were known for an incredible sense of loyalty but never for their brains. They were animals with human skins, nothing more. The thought of it made Blaise shudder and Charlie knew what she was thinking.

"You should never have come here." Charlie said. It was true. It was dangerous for any stranger to come into Summerlin, people rarely left and if they did it was only every rarely in one piece.

She shook her head. "I know the truth, Charles."

He laughed. "What truth?"

"You know don't you?" She was sure he would have known, hoped that Saben would have told him.

"No she didn't tell me as it happens. No one did. Bt I could taste it on the boy." His tongue sliding over his sharp teeth. "Same as his mother." Blaise had the impression of vast mysteries and dreamscapes that were forbidden to her because she was not like Charlie Barker.

She closed her eyes. "I didn't know."

He shrugged. Switching the amp off, the static cut off abruptly and the room filled with a poignant silence.

"You can help me find her." Blaise voice was melodic and persuasive.

Charlie growled, lips vibrating, "I'm not a sniffer dog."

"You're her friend."_ Friend_. Charlie could have laughed bitterly at the world. If Saben were a friend she would have gone to Charlie with her secrets. Trusted Charlie. But nobody truly trusted Charlie Baker, Summerlin breed. "Goddess, Charles, I need some help."

"You have your husband-"

She shook her head, no.

They held each other's gaze. The beast moved behind Charlie's eyes sussing the witch out. It was brave of her to have come all this way. He moved toward her, his body moving strangely, sinuously, rippling in the wrong places and Blaise was scared. He seized her hand and his skin was melting hot and she resisted the urge to pull her hand away.

Charlie slid the glove off her hand, he produced a pen and pressed the point hard to the surface of her skin. He looked into her face as he scrawled down the number in red ink. She grit her teeth against the stabbing tip of the pen.

She squeezed his arm and felt it go tense. "Thank you, Charlie."

He pulled himself out of her grasp. "Don't thank me." He wiped his nose with the back of his hand whilst shaking his head. "Don't thank me."

*

"My ears have been burning." Shen mumbled, cigarette bobbing between his lips.

Celsia Verain stood in the dim lamp light watching him closely. "I've lost something."

The back of the little clubhouse was grim and clogged with cigarette smoke and the underlying scent of the broken and bleeding human in the next room. "You?" Shen glanced up briefly from his deck of cards.

A smile lifted his lips from his teeth and his gold tooth winked in the semi darkness to think Celsia had not hesitated when she marched past the crucified body, unaffected by the smell of blood ripe and ready for the taking.

"She's about this high, dark hair, tattoos, attitude. You met her once, I think."

Shen rumbled with laughter. "I prefer my meat tall and blond."

"Shen." She hissed in warning, calm veneer cracking for only an instant. But that instant was enough for him to take pleasure.

"You've lost your little woman-child and you want me to find her? What a careless mother you are, Celsia Verain." He pulled the cigarette out of his mouth and tsked beneath his breath. "She been a naughty girl?"

Celsia cool blond eyebrow rose to a point. "I'm not here to indulge your fantasies, dog, I just need her found."

"For a fee." He growled.

"You'll get paid once you materialise the goods." She began to walk away, pausing briefly to glance over her shoulder. "Oh, and Shen, don't get your paws all over her or you'll have hell to pay."

It never occurred to Celsia that Saben may have already been there. She strode out into the dying daylight, she slid a pair of shades over her eyes and the world was veiled.

As she walked she brushed past a stunning dark haired woman, the woman's face was half concealed by a dark hood, the sweet scent of magic was unmistakable. Witch. Celsia stopped and turned to watch the woman's progress down the street.

The woman paused in step and looked behind her shoulder. Their eyes met. Smokey grey colliding with icy blue.

Celsia's mouth formed a cold cruel smile.


	25. Chapter 24

Twenty-Four

Tobias slid into the leather cushioned bar stool and ordered a straight bourbon from the bar tender who grumbled under his sour breath.

Abberline was not surprised to see him, glancing at him from the corner of his eye. "It's been a long time." He conceded and offered the witch a salute with the half-empty glass he had been nursing for the past hour.

"I'm not here for pleasure." Tobias said, voice tight, refusing to look directly at the vampire, afraid he'd lose his resolve.

"Neither am I." Abberline sighed. He was in the city for politics. It was hard with the divisions cracking the Night asunder, he was drumming up support for the Council, trying to get the other clans and Houses on board with the _vampires._ Preoccupied with such thoughts he had barely noticed Tobias sitting as taut as a bow string.

"Where is she?" The words slipped tremulously from the witch's mouth

"Saben?" Eyes narrowed, he had been trying not to think about her, her large liquid brown eyes staring up at him, provoking the sickly pulsation in the middle of his chest that was the cord that bound them.

There was the thud of the tumbler as the bartender lay down the neat glass of bourbon. Tobias offered a nod that was responded to with a stifled huff humph.

"I don't know." Abberline said it so softly Tobias strained to hear the syllables.

"Of course you do."

"She doesn't want to be found." Abberline said firmly the slightest of growls coming out of him.

"She's in trouble-"

"Always has been." He mumbled around a mouthful of drink.

They were eye to eye now. So much to say and so much they couldn't. They were far too important to be discussing one insignificant little street punk who slipped through the cracks of the Day into the bowels of the Night.

"Please." Tobias said under his breath. "We need to find her."

"We?" Abberline laughed. "You have a peculiar way of persuading me to do many things I know I shouldn't. If I didn't know better I would think you had be-spelled me."

He sipped from his glass. "I know about the boy."

Tobias paused at the last, lip trembling ever so slightly. Fear gripped him, a large invisible fist, fingers squeezing his heart, interrupting his breath.

"I suppose she's gone to get him back for you." Abberline shook his head, after all it had been inevitable, from the instant she had seen the boy, invading the territories of the Day, allowing herself to be lured by a life that no longer belonged to her. "She's still so young."

"She was telling the truth wasn't she? Mezereon took him."

Abberline shrugged. _True enough_. But this was not his business, he had severed his ties from Mezereon years ago.

Tobias stood gathering his coat closer to him by fingertip grip on the lapels. "What would he do if he knew?"

"Mezereon?" Abberline gave him a long hard look. Strange that he looked older, the soft subtle lines of age slowly appearing at his eyes, the corners of his mouth yet Abberline looked the same. Would always look the same. Tobias life was so fragile. His eyes hooked on Abberline's words, the pathetic strain of hope paper thin and nearing an open flame of reality. "He'd kill her."

"And you can live with that?"

He didn't reply. He wouldn't reveal the tumult of those thoughts, not to Tobias and never to himself. He had looked into Saben Mariley Frost's brown eyes and wanted to melt, to become something other than what he was, to be a good person, a worthy person.

He closed his eyes, swearing silently to himself.

"You're a coward." _Yes_.

Abberline shot out of his chair, moving from the slouch he had cultivated for some time, a hand closed round Tobias' throat. "I have learnt my lesson, boy. I will not be coerced into doing something I do not want to do. You will not use this thing as leverage to bid me as your servant."

Tobias had turned a shade of blue, choking, hands scrabbling at Abberline's immovable fingers. The bar tender glanced briefly at the scene and his eyes moved away.

Abberline released the witch. "If she dies-" he gasped between greedy lungful of breaths.

_There will be terrible madness, I know the stories but that is all they are. Stories. I have lived many lifetimes with my sanity intact, before Saben Frost was a speck in the tapestry of the Moerae. I think I can survive many years to come._

"Are you sure you want to test that theory?" Tobias shot back, voice ragged and rasping.

Abberline returned to his seat and Tobias, adjusting his coat once again he left the Night club.

The vampire returned to his slouch, but it was too late, the witch's words had made its way under his skin. The same old glass, liquid congealing in the bottom, now clutched in his hand, clutched so tightly it shattered in his grasp.

"Shit." He whispered beneath his breath.

*

"I could do this for hours." Celsia said sing song rhythm to disguise her utter boredom.

She had Shen's wrist twisted painfully against his back, steadily adding pressure. The werewolf grunted and wheezed but did not speak, blood was already frothed onto his lips, seeping through the gap of a missing front tooth. "All you have to do is tell me where she is."

Muffled protests from the bound and gagged grey eyed woman Celsia had left in the corner. Celsia spared a short sharp glance in her direction. "I'll get to you next." Hissed between sharp teeth.

"I could break you, one bone at a time. Now tell me, Shen, where is she?"

"It's not that simple." Shen erupted and Celsia released him. He collapsed and took minutes to pick himself up, he was carefully dusting off his jacket, smoothing down his greasy hair, wiping the blood off his jaw.

"Talk."

"You know exactly what she wanted." Shen said glaring at the vampire through a swollen eyelid. "Knew it even before you introduced her to me."

Celsia shrugged. Maybe she did. Maybe she had envisioned the whole thing the instant Abberline had confided in her.

"So I gave her what she wanted." He smiled then, showing the gap in his mouth. An empty space of gum where gold used to sit winking in the light.

"How did she pay you?" Arms now folded across her chest, sharp nails tapping an impatient rhythm on her own arms.

Shen looked over at the grey eyed witch.

"Oh." Celsia smiled, approaching the witch who was bound and gagged and smelt of sweet fear. She ripped the tape off her mouth, revealing ecstatic breaths. "I know you, don't I dearie?"

The woman coughed and hacked, trying to replenish her lungs, deaf to the vampire who was now inspecting the residue of skin of the woman's lips that had clung to the tape.

Eventually, a rasping voice erupted. "What's going on?"

Celsia laughed and even Shen looked amused, they shared a brief look between them. "I don't think she knows." Celsia said with a small shake of the head.

Shen shrugged. "Makes no difference to me, she's mine now."

Celsia tsked, shaking her head from left to right. "Do you know who she is?"

"She's mine." He took out a cigarette, as if his face was not broken and bleeding. "Should I care?"

"You should care a great deal." Celsia ran her fingers through the slightly damp but still exquisitely silky black curls. She stared into the equally exquisite features which were now drawn into a mask of distress. "You're royalty, aren't you? A right royal Witch."

Shen snorted reams of grey smoke through his nostrils, fingering the swollen tissue of one eye. "What are you babbling about, baby?"

"Even you know your histories, yes?" Celsia asked irritably.

Shen shrugged again exhaling more grey smoke, clogging the intimate space of the room with it. "Sure."

"Hearth women are a distinctive breed."

Shen spluttered. "You're saying this," pointing at the woman, "is a Hearth Woman?"

"Is that what I'm saying?" Celsia's smile was razor sharp.

Blaise's eyes narrowed into tiny slits whilst Celsia's smile widened to a grotesque size.

"Couldn't be true." Shen slapped his thigh. "I think she paid me more than she owed."

"Yes, a clever little girl, isn't she?" Celsia didn't think Saben had it in her.

The grey eyed woman looked to and fro, barely comprehending their dialogue. She raised a finger, pointing at Shen as he had pointed at her. "You're telling me that I've been sold to him?"

Celsia's smiled widened on her terrible monstrous teeth and the room filled with the scent of witch magic.

*

Saben crouched over the hand made fire. Spreading her fingers to feel the heat of the flames. Heat she couldn't truly feel. It couldn't match the icy cold temperature of her bones.

Echoes vibrated through the basement halls, ominous leviathan sounds in the semi-dark. It was a place to wait. It was why Buddy Shenker Finder Of Lost Things had brought her here, the firefly tip of his cig arching in the air as he bid farewell._ I'll be back, baby girl, just you wait._

So she waited. Fingers kneading the currents of heat, fingers so close to the lick of orange her skin turned black. Mesmerised by it. Mesmerised by anything that could take her mind of off Daniel. The little boy who had been sold as meat. The little boy who was her son.

An icy breeze whipped through the room the flames trembled and she shuddered.

"Penny for your thoughts."

Saben turned round swiftly to see a young girl, immaculately dressed, looking like a miniature woman but she could be no more than thirteen years old barely on the cusp of puberty. She wore a red and green plaid dress and stank like roses on the verge of rotting.

She blinked large blue eyes at Saben and offered a sharp toothed smile. "Penny for them."

"Who are you?" Inevitable shallow question. Who are you? No more or less than the next creature. Saben shook her head, confused. Her question forgotten. Both insignificant and fleeting as the smell of flowers veiled her mind.

"I can't read minds, you see? Not my talent I'm afraid." The girl moved closer, inspecting her with a bird like tilt of the head. "My name is Iris."

"What do you want?" Saben asked softly.

"It's not about what I want Saben Mariley Frost, it's about what you want. What you've been waiting for." She smiled again, unnatural teeth, too large for her child-size mouth, it was a unwholesome gash across her face and Saben was no longer convinced that she was a child at all.

"And what do I want?"

She laughed reminding Saben of the dulcet tones of a wind-chime. "You want to come with me of course."

And for an instant it was true, she so desperately wanted to follow Iris her hands trembled with the want of reaching for the girl's hand. "Where will you take me?"

"To where it all began."

Saben reached out her hand…


	26. Chapter 25

Twenty-Five

Saben recognised the place instantly.

She couldn't recollect how they had got there so fast, scenery passed in a blur, the city had turned to a rural blanket and then to the familiar path of Providence Drive that lead to the house of Baba Lucine.

The sweet scent of night blooming jasmine still wafted through the nearby cedar wood and brought with it the phantoms of suppressed memories. Her lip began to tremble as she was quietly transported back to her childhood.

The vampire child Iris was staring at the house with her face pressed to the car window, her eyes were large and liquid, lips parted as the car pulled into the drive.

Saben got out of the car slowly, planting her feet on the cracked and mossy drive.

"It was a perfect little operation, I think." Iris sighed. "Shame it had to end like it did."

Saben followed the girl inside, Iris made no sound as she crawled over the wreck of the front door, over the debris, creeping vines that had infiltrated the hall, ivy and moss making themselves home on the inside of the building as if the earth itself were claiming the structure.

Saben shuddered as the breath of the house welcomed her home. She turned in circles to take in the dark, dank innards. Familiar sights now watery and faded beneath the ebb of time. She could almost hear the screaming and laughter of children.

Iris turned to her then. "Used to pick the abandoned ones, you know? They make for the most compliant meals."

Saben felt sick because she understood what Iris meant.

"Come see, there's something else up there." Iris pointed to the floor above.

Saben swallowed a lump in her throat and followed her up the rickety staircase. She could see her old room through the slim cracks of the door. She flushed at the memory of Danny Somtow and his questing fingers slithering between the sheets, beneath her nightgown...

"In there." Iris prompted and she moved smoothly into what used to be Baba Lucine's bedroom. She opened the double doors and the rancid stench made her instantly double over and press hands over her mouth to save her senses from the onslaught.

She opened her eyes, squinting through tears, feeling dizzy from the sickly rotting smell. She found a corpulent figure nailed to the wall. Its skin was a putrid shade of green, hanging in thick folds. The hair on its scalp was brittle and sparse and she could make out the thin lipped death grin, shrivelled prunes where the eyes would have been, its nose disintegrated leaving only the nostril hollows in the skull.

Baba Lucine's limbs had been nailed to the wall with thick, vicious iron nails.

"A child escaped once but once was enough." Iris continued as if the corpse was not there at all.

That child was Saben of course. The sinking feeling of betrayal, the decimation of all the tender feelings she had had for her Baba slowly melted into an acute sadness.

She was alive only because Abberline had let her run and she had been running ever since. She curled her hands into fists letting her nails bite deep into the flesh of her palm. One day she would have to stop running.

"The Master didn't like that. He doesn't like to lose, you know? So he closed it down."

"Why are you showing me this?" She asked, her eyes shimmering with unshed tears.

"Because you belong to him." Iris said as if it were that simple.

"I belong to no one." Saben replied in an unconvincing whisper and thoughts of Abberline immediately came to mind. _Say it._

Iris laughed. Shook her head as if she were sorry for Saben's lack of understanding. "It's important to remember where you've come from."

Saben looked back at Baba Lucine's bloated, bloodless body.

"I do have one talent." Iris smiled. "I can bid the dead to talk, would you like to see the old bitch talk?"

Saben shook her head vaguely.

Iris raised a hand and Saben could almost taste the magic, the heat rush from her palm and fall across the corpse. "_Fama._"

Baba Lucine's body shuddered at the word, folds of skin shivering and then a great and terrible breath rasped past its lips.

Saben grasped Iris' arm. "What are you doing?"

"Watch and listen." Iris smiled with her sharp teeth, eyes on Baba Lucine, beads of sweat breaking out on her brow.

Baba's voice rose, her dry throat working in horrible spasms, the tone like an aged man, garbled and desperate and barely making sense at all. _"It's all your fucking fault you worthless piece of trash. Should never have bargained for you. Should never have bought you. Should never have-"_

"Enough." Iris hissed her body trembling ever so slightly.

The corpse slumped forward and was still and dead.

"It's time to go." Iris said.

"Where?" She asked distractedly, her whole being focused on the dead body that was for a moment not dead at all. She wanted to stay in the fetid room with the rotting body of Baba Lucine, she wanted Baba to talk and talk and talk…

Baba Lucine was the only mother Saben ever knew.

"It's almost time." Iris said already walking away. "You'll see."

*

There was a charred black stain and smoky smell where Buddy Shenker had been standing.

"Now you didn't have to go and do that." Celsia smiled to disguise the small twinge of fear the fluttered through her stomach.

Blaise Harman stood like a vengeful goddess, her fingers ignited with orange witch fire, surrounded in the perfume of singed flesh. Celsia could see the ghostly vistas of the great wars where the spell casters rose against the great nation of skin walkers.

The adrenaline of having exorcised her Power was slowly streaming away in a cool, tasteless wind that ruffled Celsia's hair throwing strands into her eyes.

"These things have consequences." Celsia continued. "Prices to pay."

Blaise turned to the vampire, her eyes as bright and hard as discs of silver. "If you don't want to end up like that animal you better-."

Celsia laughed. "I'm not afraid of you witch. If anything happens to me, there is no telling what can happen to Saben or your little Danny boy. You might want to remember that next time you threaten me with..." She wiggled her fingertips to signify her magic.

Blaise flushed red, storms rolled through her eyes and her lips pursed. She raised a finger pointing at Celsia's cold expression, a spark of red lightning illuminated her fingertips. "You will help me find them."

"I suppose that would be sensible but the one person I could depend upon to find anything is, well, as you know." Celsia's hand flew carelessly toward the black mark that had once been Shen.

Blaise's eyes moved to the sight of it and Celsia saw the first flicker of weakness cross the witch's features. Blaise Harman was no killer, Celsia could already see the subtle lines of guilt thread through the witch's conscience. What Blaise had invoked from her own bare hands to eradicate the werewolf in a glorious burst of flame was no small trifle. It suggested that the Day were far more dangerous than the Night anticipated.

Celsia moved with impressive speed taking Blaise by the throat, she pressed her lips to the woman's ear to speak. "To me, my dear, you are just meat, not even of the Night, just like that filthy half breed child you're so eager to call your own."

Blaise mouth trembled though she did not speak at first because she had had such thoughts once too. Her cheeks burnt with shame as she finally understood Thea's words all those years ago. _It's a lie, a racist lie. I hope you feel ashamed of yourself._

"If you believe that then why are you looking for Saben Frost?"

Celsia's mouth was cold on her skin and she suppressed a shiver. "Ah, Saben. Sabey. She's just so precious, isn't she? A special one. If things had gone to plan she should have disappeared a long time ago."

"If you hate her so much, why-"

"Because it's my duty." Celsia's grip relaxed on Blaise's throat to stroke the soft creamy pale skin. "You know about that, don't you? Isn't that why you're here?"

"I'm here because I love my son."

"Don't you mean 'her son', sweetheart?"

"We could work this out together."

Celsia's hand drifted from her neck to Blaise's collarbone and felt the pause in her breath. Celsia's body shook as she laughed. "Now that would be interesting, you promise not to kill me and I'll promise not to kill you. What could we possibly have to work out?"

"We could help each other."

"What makes you think I even need you to find her?"

"If anything happens to me, the whole of Circle Daybreak will come looking for me."

"I suppose that may be true, but it would only make life terribly exciting."

"Isn't there even a shred of compassion left in you, vampire?"

"Compassion? Compassion belongs to the mortal and the young." Celsia laughed. "And I haven't been human for a very long time."

"If you help me get Daniel then I'll help you get rid of Saben Frost."

Celsia went silent. The air in the room seemed to go cold until Blaise could see her breath cloud before her eyes. "That's what you want, isn't it? Beneath it all? You want rid of her but you can't risk being implicated in her death. I could do it. I can make it look like an accident, just-" She was whispering ecstatically. "We'll just call a truce and work this thing out."

Celsia released her and Blaise stumbled forward, hands flying to her throat trying to dampen the sensation of the vampire's icy touch.

"Keep talking, witch." Celsia said, a keen smile twisted her lips.

*

Saben was on her knees without having any recollection of getting there. She could not help herself, but could not even think about standing in his presence.

He glowed as if lit by the very light of heaven. His copper hair haloed his head like flame and his deep dark eyes bore into her being, scouring her very soul and every pore was willingly open to him. He was a living god, Ra, Apollo, Sol Invictus and she was his devoted disciple.

"Welcome." Mezereon's voice boomed, moving outside and inside her very being and her soul gladly sung to the chorus of his voice.

Iris small cold hand found the crown of Saben's head. "Welcome home, sister."


	27. Chapter 26

Twenty-Six

Surely Saben Frost had been born in the company of the vampire called Mezereon. Deep in her very being, her molecules vibrated with the knowledge that she was utterly and hopelessly in love with him.

Every moment was grief that was not spent in the sight of Mezereon.

Bright halos gleamed above his head, making his copper curls shine like something precious. His eyes were dark, piercing, cut from black rock. They were eyes that had seen too much and did not suit his round and youthful face, his mouth soft and cherub-like, he had been barely fifteen when he had Turned.

Time passed differently in the golden haze of Mezereon's refuge.

Deep in the earth, in a labyrinth of tunnels he conducted his business amidst a revel, Saben could never have imagined the sprawling society that existed there, all devotees to Mezereon's cause.

He reclined on a golden throne draped in animal furs, the head of a large wolf sat on one arm. "You may ask me a question if you like." He said and stroked dark hair from her face and her eyes closed to luxuriate in the sensation of his touch.

She was drunk on it, had been glutting on it for days as jealous eyes looked on.

"What would please you?" The words had been taken out of her mouth before her mind had a chance to listen to what she had said.

"Sing for me, my little songbird, sing for me."

So she sang, and sang, and sang and could not remember a time when she had done so and she knew without equivocation that she had always sung for Mezereon. She found herself simpering beneath his smiles, swooning at the merest glance...as if she were in love.

She spent brief moments in reprieve, shut away in a small room which had four walls and a bunk. She lay on the cool sheets and each time she shut her eyes Mezereon's face was printed on the back of her eyelids.

She relished the memories of his touch, soft and gentle and passionate as he summoned her to his private chambers.

There was a timid knock on the door and she rose, alert, ready to be taken back before Mezereon, she had a sick hunger for it.

"Saben?" Iris face peered round the door.

Saben had a vision of the time Iris had guided her to this room. "You will speak when he tells you to speak. You will sing when he tells you to sing. You will feed when he tells you to feed. You will be his and his alone because you belong to him." Her voice as cool as the a frigid air through the tunnels as she sealed her to him.

"Will we see him tonight?" Again those words, her voice, the desperate need flooding each syllable and yet somewhere she knew it wasn't right.

"Not tonight." Iris said and reached out an lily white hand. "I have something to show you."

Saben looked this way and that, as if seeking approval, as if fearing Mezereon's displeasure for surely as a living god he could see all.

"Come."

Fingers trembling, Saben took the girl's hand.

She was led into the darkness of the halls, her bare feet soundless on the cold ceramic tiles. "Tonight the master dines with his clients." Iris murmured.

Clients. That word, the air, she could feel her perfect notion of love for Mezereon slip away from her like the tide. But it was momentary.

"We can enjoy a little treat." Iris smiled showing her sharp teeth.

The further she moved away from Mezereon the easier it was to remember parts of herself including the need to feed.

Iris took her past the Parlour of Games where the soft sighs and ambient music spilled into the corridor. Saben paused thinking they were going to enter but the little vampire put a finger to her lips and pulled her onwards.

"You hungry?" Iris asked.

The moment the words left the girl's lips Saben realised she was ravenous, her fangs wear protruding, her gums aching and she was suddenly aware of the cramps painfully seizing her stomach. "Yes." Her voice erupted in as a sigh.

"Then I have a surprise for you."

"Wait." She said as Iris tugged her forward, "Does Mezereon know about this?"

Iris looked both ways to confirm the halls were empty. "He won't catch us, his guest is a very old friend." Though the word friend did not sit well on her tongue.

Soon the ceramic tiles beneath her feet turned to damp stone. "Iris-"

"It's not far now, sister." Saben could see her fangs flash in the night like twin blades and a shudder ran through her as the air changed from the icy fragrance of Mezereon's inner sanctum to a sour stench of human waste and rot.

A hand flew to her mouth as if she could stop the onslaught of ripe shit and piss from cramming its way in her throat and nostrils. As id she didn't have the memory of Baba Lucine's bloated, decomposing corpse imprinted on her senses.

Iris smile was unnaturally wide, pointing into the darkness, the same direction the smell was emanating from. Suddenly Saben was scared.

The shock of the sensation cleared her mind and she wandered she was doing here, hadn't she had a purpose? Then it was gone, almost as quickly as it had materialised and she was inching closer toward the dark, passed the tip of Iris' finger.

She could smell the shivering child flesh before she saw them, could hear their teeth clattering and feet dragging on stone. There were twenty or more children cramped together like an organic mass of fear and loathing.

The smell was sweet to her senses and hunger consumed all her other senses.

"I'll let you taste one if you're quick." Iris said as she appeared with a cold smile, thoroughly pleased with herself.

It took effort for her to turn her head to the vampire child and she was irresistibly pulled back to the cage by the beat of blood that flowed through their virgin skin. Her ear caught the rhythm of their hearts and she was brought to her knees, her hands curling around the thick iron bars.

She tried to focus on their faces, to separate one from the next but they were all made one by the soot and mud. She could see her own reflection in their eyes filled with the gloss of new tears, her face gaunt, her fangs as large as sabres.

There was a ripple of movement as they tried, desperately to keep as far back as possible even if it meant crushing the child behind.

But he didn't move. His face shone like pearl amidst the silt, his chin lifted in defiance and his eyes, the colour of fertile soil, eyes that were so like his mother's were has hard as tunnel rock. He glared at her despite his trembling lip.

"Which one would you like?" Iris prompted and Saben hissed. The sound provoked a shared whimper from the gathered children.

She could see Daniel flinch and instantly felt ashamed of what she was, the hunger receded but didn't altogether disappear. _Lark_, her heart began to ache and Mezereon's magic faded just a little.

She feared that Iris could read her hesitation and she reached between the bars, control, she thought to herself as she grasped Daniel's collar and pulled him toward her until his nose touched the cool bars.

She could feel his pulse pumping through her own tongue and knew she could rip into his skull with her teeth, as if it were a ripe piece of fruit. I would never hurt you, she projected into his mind, his mouth going slack, his eyes wide as he voice penetrated his thoughts. _I want to help you._

"Quick now." Iris urged.

Saben released Daniel and he collapsed into the dirt and grasped the plump arm of the next child: a skinny, dark haired girl with large golden eyes.

Saben put her lips to the child's skin and was surprised to find the girl was not trembling like the others but was passive as if resigned to her fate. She only hesitated a moment before sinking teeth into her neck and the blood exploded onto her tongue.

The blood tasted bitter, and she knew it was the keen edge of disease she had tasted. She released the girl and her frail sickly body collapsed back Daniel's arms, he wound his arms around her protectively, his expression fierce and filled with hatred for the monster vampire beyond the bars.

Saben wiped the blood from her lips, the taste still thick on her tongue and suddenly the completeness of Mezereon's spell and her appetite fell away, her fangs receded and a keen sense of nausea rose.

She met Daniel's furious gaze, her lips parting on an unspoken apology.

There was a noise in the tunnels and Iris looked nervously about her. "We should go now." She took Saben by the wrist and tugged her away from the cage.

Saben cast one last look at Daniel who stared steadily back, eyes that were so much like his mother's.

"Quickly." Iris hissed and they sprinted through the tunnels, rock damp enough to slip. Iris' sense of panic could only amplify Saben's own. The crushing weight of where she was, who she was and who she was with threatened to steal her resolve.

It didn't take long to reach the corridors where paltry torchlight offered some reprieve from the disorienting darkness. Even the dull glow of the flame was harsh to her unaccustomed sight.

The taste of Mezereon's magic rammed up her nostrils like an invisible limb and she doubled over, choking on it. Iris tugged her in a valiant effort to get her to move but Saben could not be roused quick enough and she abandoned her.

Through her watery gaze, Saben could see Iris small frame disappear into the distance seeking the refuge of her own little room.

Mezereon's spell was warring against the blood she had just ingested and she felt torn between the two. Her insides were twisting in immeasurable pain. She staggered through the hall, drawn on by the distant echoes of life.

Moving in a sickly daze she bumped into something and her lips opened to apologise, to beg forgiveness for it was surely Mezeron's own hands that gripped her bare shoulders so hard. Weakness invaded her and she slumped forward, collapsing..


	28. Chapter 27

Twenty-Seven

When Celsia Verain had warned of how hard it was to get invited to Mezereon's market she was understating the truth.

Blaise Harman had endured days and hours of questions and drunken People invading her personal space, she was trying to keep her composure in the dim little party being thrown beneath the foundations of a Night owned restaurant.

It had taken weeks to find the little rave and even at the door, the men posted to guard the entrance had almost refused them.

She was frightened at first that she would be recognised but no one seemed to care that a Harman had descended the stone stairs and into the din of the stinking celebration in the arms of a vampire notorious for her affiliation to the Night Lord Cebren.

"What are we celebrating?" She had stopped asked one witch who had stopped twirling for a moment to swig a champagne flute of hibiscus and blood tinged champagne.

"We are celebrating our allegiance, sister." The girl replied breathlessly.

The girl seemed drugged, her pupils dilated and pulse racing. "I am Panthea."

"Blaise Ha-"

The girl put a thick finger to her lips. "We have no clans here, sister, we are all of one House."

"Is that right?"

"Won't you join the dance, Blaise?"

Hands reached for her, sliding over her hips and thighs and she danced with them because it would look unfriendly if she did not. She had her teeth grit through it all, she felt as if each and every person were possessed of some madness.

She searched the room trying to catch the eye of Celsia who moved like a sylph through the outer darkness.

Blaise was trapped between a mass of grinding flesh, the magic in the air was potent, it was telling her to surrender her limbs to the tribal rhythm, to truly give in to the belief that they were one People of one House and one flesh.

She closed her eyes for an instant and saw how easy it was to forget the outside world but she was a powerful witch, her lineage could be traced the Queen of witches, Hecate herself who ascended to the plane of the gods. She would not be thwarted by any spell.

"You're enjoying this." Verain whispered suddenly by her ear and she found they were dancing together and may have been for some time.

"Can we go?" Blaise asked, hand grasping the vampire's cold fingers. "We should go."

"Not until we've come here to do what we need to do." Verain whispered softly her eyes raising to the far side of the room. "There, in the shadows. No, don't look so obvious. That is our ticket in but you'll have to play along. Can you do that, witch?"

Blaise saw from the periphery of her vision, in the inky shadows beneath an awning, sprawled on a couch a corpulent man was reclined with a glass of blood clutched in one hand and a woman held in the other. He was too old to be vampire and yet twin fangs glinted as the lights touched his face for an instant.

Yes he's old, but no not vampire. A skin walker through and through, he is one of Mezereon's most loyal customers.

"How do you know these things?" Blaise muttered.

We're old friends, Khan and I. And Celsia took hold of Blaise's wrist, grinding the bones lightly and dragged her out of the rabble. "Shall we say hello?"

They came to a stop before the man who was at home in the oily darkness, shapes moved behind and around him, the sound of women's sighs escaped in scant breaths. His eyes were the green of oak leaves flecked with gold and they cut through the din to Celsia and he instantly released the woman he had been holding.

"Sia." His voice came out in a short sharp growl.

Though he was a large man he moved swiftly, throwing the bodies off of him and stood before Celsia until they were hairs breadth apart. The lights played off of his brown skin, and he smelt of something wild and not altogether pleasant.

Celsia smiled, showing fangs, one hand shooting to the thick wealth of Blaise's dark hair and with a little pressure forced the witch to her knees. "It's a pleasure to see you again." He said, the strange growl working through his baritone voice.

"Pleasure?" Celsia smiled wider wrenching Blaise's head this way and that. "We will speak of pleasures after."

His eyes strayed down to Blaise who was flushed and in pain, Khan licked his lips and reluctantly turned his attention back to Celsia. "A gift?"

"Perhaps." Celsia smiled and began to gently pat Blaise's head the way one would a cat or dog. Blaise grit her teeth, sick of being used as bait for one Person or other, it licked at her pride and she hoped others would never find out about it.

"It has been a long time and you have not changed a bit. You want something of me, Sia?" He sounded for a frightening instantly utterly furious as if he were ready to go for Celsia's throat but instead he supplicated himself giving a low scraping bow. "I would give you anything."

"I have bought my offering for the feast, Khan." She threw Blaise down until the witch was on all four before him. "All I need is an invitation."

Khan made a disgusted noise in his throat. "I thought your master banned you from such places. I thought the House of Cheber had not dealings with the dens. "

"What my master doesn't know won't kill him."

There was a terrifying look in the skin walker's eyes as he cast them down to Blaise, a thread of sympathy perhaps moving in the dark forest of his gaze. "Don't be so sure." He murmured.

*

Beneath the veils of Mezereon's spells and in the warrens of his chosen, Saben was curled on her cot, her stomach cramping hard from the bad blood still working steady in her veins. She couldn't have said how she had got to her bunk or for how long she had been lying there.

There was a soft knock at the door but she was deaf, consumed by a weakness that seemed to infiltrate her to the bone. Reality was slowly being restored to her through the hurting, the knowledge of why she was here became more solid and her keen hatred for Mezereon strengthened.

Iris slipped into the room in a flash and was beside her in an instant, one small hand stroking damp hair from her head. "A bad one?" She hmmed though offered no real sympathy. "Should have known the skinny wretch was bad, not even a full blood witch, almost all human."

Saben began to shiver, her teeth chattering.

"We can't let the Master find out." Iris said.

"The Master knows everything." Saben said through her teeth, softly, hoping Iris could not hear the loathing in her voice.

"He does but he won't know this." She was utterly convicted and then she tugged hard on a handful of Saben's hair. "You won't say a thing."

"Why are you here, Iris?" Saben asked, taking pains to smooth out her voice, not to draw suspicion nor betray her true thoughts.

"To come check on-"

"No." A short sharp reprimand and then softening her voice. "I mean here."

Iris sighed heavily, knowing the curiosity of all newly formed vampires and she chose to indulge Saben. "It's a story much like your own, I think. I was chosen." Which was all she would disclose.

"How old are you?" Saben asked, though Iris looked young, her eyes spoke of different histories.

"Old?" She asked as if confused by the question.

"Iris." Saben wheezed as a convulsive flash of pain went through her.

"As humans would reckon, three hundred and twenty, I think." Iris said casually.

Iris was born in 1682, even the thought of it made Saben shudder. It seemed so strange to have been removed from life so long ago, to have been human and now be completely of an otherness. Iris had no real experience other than with Mezereon.

"It doesn't make a difference here." Iris said almost cheerfully.

Saben closed her eyes and was consumed by the feeling of being utterly trapped. Iris had been enslaved for three hundred and more years, what hope had Saben of getting Daniel free of Mezereon. What hope was there for any of them unless she killed Mezereon first? The very thought seemed to split the fabric of the room and a breeze hissed through the corridors.

"It's better in here." Iris said in hushed tones.

"What's going to happen to those children?" She asked thinking of the skinny, shivering, pale faces that had stared up at her from between the iron bars.

"You know, don't you?"

"Yes." They would die.

"Has anyone every escaped?"

Iris paused in stroking her hair. "You ask too many questions." But Iris couldn't read minds, it was never her talent.

"Answer this one." She asked with no real authority in her voice, she shivered with sickness and was completely at Iris' mercy as she had been from the first instant they met.

"No. Not alive anyhow." Iris resumed stroking her hair which had gone damp with sick sweat. "I like you Saben, please don't give me a reason not to like you."

"I hope to never do that, Iris." Saben whispered and closed her eyes.

*

Mezereon, the vampire child king sat on his gilded throne, back straight mimicking a princely stature trying to exude casual, comfort, calm but the unmistakable charge of violence was in the air as Abberline, also known as Night Lord Cebren of the House of Cheber, sat beside him.

Abberline was seated on a lower, far less elaborate couch, staring up at Mezereon whose chest and feet were bare and basking in golden light.

They had a deep history, all of it neatly not discussed as they sat before each other. No grudges mentioned though they fuelled the threat between them.

"I want to purchase something of yours." Blunt, to the point. Abberline wanted to play as few games as possible to get out of Mezereon's dens alive.

A breath hissed between Mezereon's sharp teeth.

"Oh I do love it when you talk business, Cebren." Flash of anger through Abberline's eyes at the sound of that name, the name reserved for Council business, dignitaries, a life that he held separate and also a past he didn't kindly remember. "I thought you were too modern to condone the handling of slaves?"

"We are both old men, Mezereon." He said, his voice emotionless and cold careful not to provoke the other vampire.

Mezereon laughed and light dancing about them, Abberline could feel the constriction of the spell that had been cast and it tickled his senses. He fought not to show it, not to bend beneath it but he knew lesser people were snared by the power of it. They all fell into sudden and utter obsession.

"Tell me what is this thing I have that you would come to me in humility to purchase? Is it a nice piece of boy flesh, you're after? Like the old days? Some rare or exotic blood, perhaps?" Mezereon leant forward on the arm of his throne, a copper-blond brow raising.

Abberline's eyes turned to the people lurking in the shadows, Mezereon's fanatics waiting for the chance to protect their master and claim a reward for it.

"You could wait for the auction."

"I heard you have acquired something, a vampire, a girl who sings." He said tone remaining even and calm although he could feel the emotion welling inside at the hint or mention of Saben Mariley Frost.

Mezereon went red in the face, instantly suspicious. "You know of her?"

"Her reputation proceeds her."

Mezereon gave a razor edge smile. "Why that one?"

How dangerous Mezereon could be if he knew the truth. How he would take it out of Saben's hide and destroy Abberline altogether. Abberline forced a smile to his lips, a cold, hungry smile that would have cowed a lesser vampire. "I would like her to sing for me and my House."

Anger, white hot rage flitted across Mezereon's cherubic features like a fierce ugly shadow. "I think you'll find she will only sing when I tell her to sing."

Abberline's eyes flashed, he felt his own share of anger, though his face did not change. To think Mezereon had possessed Saben utterly, having her body and the spell claiming her love, it made him want to shake with fury.

"It's a shame, I don't think she would want to leave me." Mezereon said casually and turned to the shadows. "Bring my little songbird. You'll see."

*****

When the two large skin walkers burst into the room, the vampire child Iris gripped Saben Frost's shoulder, digging in sharp nails to make crescent incisions in Saben's skin. "Don't cry." Iris hissed in her ear.

Saben could not stop her uncontrollable shivering and was glad of the hard grips of the two swarthy guards as they held her up and marched her out of the room, her feet dragging on the floor in an effort to keep up.

"Where are you taking me?" She mumbled, trying and failing to match her footsteps to theirs.

"The Master wants you immediately." One of them said softly, dreamily, even large beasts could be brought to heel at the spells Mezereon had laid on his meat dens.

She forced a smile to her lips, pearls of sweat beading on her brow. "I can't wait."

She was taken through the intimate corridor, the dim little passage Mezereon's chosen often used to scuttle to and from his presence. She was instantly suspicious by the lack of sound, the strange stillness and wafting phantoms of incense. The den was lit by a few fragrant torches, the couches and cushions were empty.

The guards released her and she was unsteady on her feet, her body still riddled with weakness and she rocked too and fro.

There was a growl from beneath the breath of one of the skin walkers and his large hands grasped her garment and began to tug. The other seized the hem and ripped the fabric from the bottom. Torn between the two pulling hands, Saben struggled to remain on her feet.

She was nude.

Suffering under Mezereon's spell she would have thought nothing of it but here and now, her head clear and terrified she struggled not to hide her body with hands and arms. Their eyes were not interested in her bare flesh and they pushed her forward into the sight of the gleaming throne and also Abberline seated beside it.

Her heart threatened to beat, false breath stuck in her throat.

She forced herself to remain docile, to keep a smile at the corners of her mouth as she supplicated herself at Mezereon's feet, stumbling towards him shivering at the touch of his cold bare flesh. "What will you have of me, my Master?" Her voice was more breathy than she had intended.

Mezereon laughed and Saben flinched.

She raised her eyes to Mezereon willing him to believe in her adoration, adoration that she didn't feel inside but thinking, perhaps she could convince him with sheer force of will. From the corner of her eye she could see a dark figure shifting uncomfortably in his seat.

She knew who it was with little effort, her soul already seeking accord with him, her whole being trying to toward him for a closer look, to touch, to taste. _Abberline_. She was confident that she could utterly deceive Mezereon especially if she could managed to convince Abberline.

Mezereon's hand plunged into the sweat tangle of her hair and he pulled her up to his face and she found his milky pale teeth, long and sharp and threateningly close. Her lips trembled an instant before his mouth closed on hers, his tongue sliding between her lips, his hands moving possessively over her body.

She shuddered again, hoping Mezereon would mistake this for desire.

Abberline went as still as a statue, unable to do anything but watch the spectacle. Irresistibly jealous. He could feel the pulse of her being through the link they shared, the poison weakness invaded it, the loathing she felt shimmered through it and he knew her inside and out through the secret whispers their bond entailed.

She was afraid Mezereon would taste the sickblood on her tongue. He eventually released her and she collapsed like lead weight against his legs, rubbing her cheek on the silk of his trousers, her expression remote almost dreamy, lids half closed and a content smile hovering on her swollen mouth as his claiming hand rested on her hair.

"You see, Cebren? All that you see here is mine, it belongs to me, it is beholden to me." The cherubic cheeks flushed with pleasure as a hideous grin broke out on his features. "Who do you belong to?"

_Say it._

"You." She replied in a long shuddering breath.

"You can not lie to me, songbird." He cooed to Saben.

"Never, my lord." She murmured.

"Ah do you hear that, Cebren? She calls me her lord."

Abberline's eyes flashed whitehot hatred. _Lord_. This was a sore spot for Mezereon, having been denied the status of Lord, he had been denied the title by the Council and denied a seat. But Abberline had been chosen and sought after until he finally acceded, this fact stung Mezereon even to this day.

Abberline gave the vaguest nod his eyes on Saben, uncontrollably lured by the sight of her.

"What would please you, master?" Saben asked to turn Mezereon's eyes from Abberline.

"Lord Cebren here has heard of you, my love, a vampire whose voice is like no other. Did you know his mother used to sing? Now that was a woman with many talents." Abberline was steadily simmering, the tips of his fingers digging into the arms of the chair until the leather began to tear and he launched himself to this feet at the last.

Saben knew his mother sang, she was a siren, a creature of an older world who had ruled an isle with a gentle hand and Saben knew all of that had come to ruin. The memory was a barb in Abberline's psyche, she had to closer her eyes as the strength of Abberline's emotion rocked and rippled through her skin.

Mezereon remained seated, calm, dangerously cool, stroking Saben's cheek and the next instant his hand moved to close a hand round her throat. "Why does he want you so?" He whispered in her ear.

She did not answer, though her eyes were on Abberline's face and he could see more white than he ought to and could clearly see she was under no spell. Her fangs sat on her swollen bottom lip, her eyes turned the molten gold of ancient treasures and animal thoughts rolled through her eyes. She could take a bite, it would be so easy, the most natural thing in the world and she would gorge herself on the ichor of a god and take his life.

"Enough games." Abberline said cutting through the tension with a harsh bark, Saben's teeth retracted and her eyes closed the brute thoughts deserting her, her resolve deserting her too. "I want to make a purchase, Mezereon. Either you accept or-"

"Or you'll send your Council to punish me?" He threw Saben to the ground and she landed in a sprawl of limbs, Mezereon was oblivious to how close he had come to danger. He stood, though he wasn't very tall, all the elements imagined and real made him seem larger than he was. "It is an insult to come here into my home and demand anything of me. You chose a long time ago where to put your allegiance, Cebren." Spitting the vampire's name as if it were a curse.

"I didn't know you were bitter, Mezereon." Abberline replied a cruel smile on his lips.

"We were like brothers…once."

Abberline snorted. "We were never that."

"No I was almost your father, eh?"

It seemed the final straw, Abberline swung for the vampire boy, his knuckles connecting with Mezereon's round womanly cheek sending him over the arm of his throne, ripping skins and the wolf scull from its mantle and he was scrambling to his feet on the other side.

"You will regret that, boy." Mezereon hissed.

Saben was still on the floor, content to remain there as the spell squeezed tight around her body, closing in on her throat bidding her to protect Mezereon but she watched helpless as a newborn as the two vampire's grappled.

It seemed at first as if Abberline had the advantage, being physically older, better developed than Mezereon's child body but Mezereon was impossibly quick and vicious. The sound of bones breaking, of skin ripping assailed Saben's ears and she moved sluggishly to stand.

"No." She cried out with a vehemence that brought the two to a standstill.

Mezereon was crouched on one knee, eyes narrowed and ready to lunge at Abberline with teeth bared. Saben went to him, arms reaching, wrapping around his bare chest, pressing her cheek against his hair. "No more, Master, please." She whispered and met Abberline's eyes the electric blue of striking lightning.

She saw blood roll down his temple from a small gash and it commanded her fangs and she was tempted not just by blood but the proximity of Mezereon. She could sink her teeth and seek vengeance through his flesh until he was dead and they were all free, every soul he had sundered from the natural world.

Hurt and anger rippled through the link and Saben clenched her teeth as it hit her in ever expanding waves. Abberline's clear message that she should not take this moment to strike.

Mezereon began to tremble with laughter and Saben released him, collapsing on the floor beside him.

"I will not let this one go. She has special value, don't you remember her, Cebren?" He gripped Saben by the hair once more and threw her forward. "Choose some other child from the auction, any one you wish but you will not get this one. She was one of Lucine's children. This is the one that got away all those years ago. Both of you must learn that nothing escapes me, not now, not ever."


	29. Chapter 28

Twenty-Eight

Saben Frost woke up with a horrible taste in her mouth, her head felt as if it were about to split, and stranger still was the pulsating sensation in her chest as if her heart had come back to life. She had never felt more human than at that instant.

She drank in the sight of him, his legs and arms were crossed, his blue eyes intense and staring directly at her.

By God he was beautiful, the very sight of him made obliterated all thoughts of Mezereon. The stranger was the embodiment of Thoth, Sin Máni, a youthful Tecciztecatl and she was for an instant convinced of her devotion to him. Who was Apollo, who was Ra when the cold silver blue radiance of the Moon had come for her?

And as the haze cleared a little more she had a sense of de-ja-vu but it was so hard to remember things clearly. "You awake?" His voice was pleasant, deep almost comforting, easing the ache in her head.

"What's going on?" She asked, her voice husky and not altogether awake.

"Saben."

She shivered at the sound of her name. She sat up slowly, her limbs aching though she was not broken or bleeding.

"You'll be sick for a while unless you flush the bad blood from your system." He said.

How had he known she had drank rancid blood? She stared at him, studying his face, cold and pale features, deceptively youthful but beautiful. It was his eyes. How had she forgotten his eyes, electric blue and filled with the mysteries of the heavens?

"You remember me?"

She nodded but did not trust herself to speak.

"I suppose I should congratulate you for getting in alive."

"What did it cost you?"

He tilted his head. "Money comes and goes."

"No." She said sharply. "To be here now." Pointing to the ground in front of her.

His eyebrows raised and a small smile came and went. "Never mind."

"Cebren." His name erupted from her lips and his eyes narrowed. He didn't like to be called Cebren. He stood and approached her carefully, his body was all rippling grace and predatory, she was frightened of him, sure that any of his good humour had long since evaporated _You do not want to test the boundaries of the Night._

"That's my name, do you remember the rest?"

"Daniel." She stared past him and at the door as if she could see through the wood and back toward the cage that held the children captive.

"Yes, your son."

She closed her eyes and tears rolled down her cheeks. "My son."

"You've come here to get him out."

She nodded and opened her eyes to find him right before her face, his lips close enough to kiss. "He's in the basement." She whispered.

"They usually are." He replied coldly.

A rush of anger revived her body and she grit her teeth to stop herself from screaming. Yes, she remembered him. Abberline. Cebren. _Soulmate_.

_Yes_. His voice hissed through her mind as everything clicked and the past came rushing back to her in one glorious burst and she whimpered as she fell forward, Abberline caught her, holding her whilst the last shudders ran through her. He was relieved she remembered, relieved by her touch to know she was solid.

"This is the part where you come up with a plan to save us all." She whispered in his ear, sharp teeth sliding to touch her lip, her lips brushing the cool skin of his throat.

He shuddered but didn't speak because she knew he had no plan just as his title and all his Power could not guarantee his own safety in this place.

"Why are you here?" She asked. "You heard Mezereon, he's not going to sell me and you know I'm not going to leave without Daniel."

"He doesn't even know you."

"He's still my flesh and blood."

They sat for a while in silence with their arms around one another they fell into the silver edged world reserved for the two of them alone. A place where they could be at peace, if only for a moment.

Reality inevitably invaded and the revelation of what Mezereon had done to her, how she had supplicated herself, how she had worshipped him, how she had the taste of him on the inside of her mouth made her sicker than the diseased blood she had ingested.

"I want Mezereon dead." She said.

_It's not that easy_. His voice rolled gently through her mind, the quality of it managing to sooth her aches and pain._ That is something you can not do alone, Saben._

"Maybe." She said, lip trembling.

_You won't do it. You're not a killer._ It was part of what drew him to her, her gentleness, her stubbornness, her desperate sadness.

"I am what you all made me."

_There'll be a terrible price to pay. _

"I'll bear it."

_You'll never see your son again._ But he wanted say 'you'll never see me again' but he didn't say it aloud but she heard it and knew this consequence too. She knew now as she had many times before, to live without Abberline was a terrible thing indeed.

But he could live on without her, resolute not to think about her, resolute not to care if she lived or died. _I have lived many lifetimes before Saben Mariley Frost, I can survive many years to come._

She could feel him wince as his words drifted through her, but it was okay because even though they were bound she had known as she always had , that they could never truly be together. It was what had sent her running from him as a child, it was what had let him let her go at that instant crouched in the cedar wood, her cheeks smudged with dirt.

Love wasn't enough. What was love anyway? Blind, destructive, unrealistic thing, created by gods and men who had the luxury of a short life.

"Say it." She said.

"What?"

"Say it."

"I have to go." He said.

The image of Daniel's dirt smeared face filled her mind and the unabashed contempt that had shone in his eyes and Abberline saw this too. He gripped her a little bit tighter as the pain rocked through her.

_I'll bear it._ She repeated like a mantra and shut her eyes tight as the door closed between them perhaps for the last time.


	30. Chapter 29

Twenty-Nine

The effort it took to pretend to succumb to the magic was wearing on Saben. She moved about distractedly, forcing a soft hazy smile to her lips that never quite reached her eyes.

Her ears were ringing with Mezereon's voice, a doomed knowledge that she would never escape him had preoccupied her since. It seemed the very earth groaned in sympathy as leviathan sounds rose from the deep corridors of the meat dens and Abberline…she might never see him again.

Whispers were shared among the chosen that night as they readied themselves for Feast.

Iris was helping her dress, schooling her in gentle whispers. "There will be many People, we have never had such a collection of witch flesh as you have seen."

"Why only witches?" She asked in monotone.

Iris laughed. "You must have known the witches seceded from the Night. They pledged their allegiance to the Day which makes them no better than…vermin." The vampire child looked fiercely convicted which made Saben feel sad.

The small pinprick of emotion amongst the swamp of dread. She was barely listening as Iris continued. "Those ones you saw are the Master's pledge to the Night, sons and daughters of spell casting nation, an offering in his bid for power."

Saben's hands had knotted into fists though her expression remained dull. What if Daniel wasn't kin to the spell casting nation?

So Mezereon thought he could lure and gain the loyalty of some of the most dangerous People with child meat and dark pleasures. She couldn't imagine what a boy immortal would do with power over a world already spiralling into destruction.

Iris pulled a comb through her long brown hair. "You will sing for him and you will be presented to outsiders as his chosen." Iris was beaming, proud of the sight of Saben who was iridescent a silk dress. "Then there will be the auction and then a feast…"

Auction. Saben could see Daniel, his face taking shape in her mind, intense hatred radiating through his brown eyes.

She uncurled her hands and spread her fingers in her lap, looking down at them, feigning nerves.

"Come." Iris tugged on her arm and they converged with the other chosen who were dreamily preparing themselves for the night's spectacle.

Saben could hear the rattle of chains before she could smell the unwashed child slaves dragging their feet across the cool tiles, marching sluggishly toward their fate. She broke away from the gathered and moved toward the sounds and scents until she caught them in her sight.

"Not that one." Iris erupted into the grim procession, startling Saben. She was pointing to the small dark haired child with the large silvery eyes, the girl with the bitter diseased blood that still ran acrid in Saben's veins.

The children collectively turned to look at Iris and then Saben and panic set amongst them, screams and tears and the oppressive stench of piss and blood as they soiled themselves anew. Iris strode into the midst of the children her hand outstretched reaching for the girl child.

Saben watched the girl's expression and it was the same as it had been in the catacombs, the same sense of resignation as if she were ready to die. Daniel stood a little in front of her, his lip thrust out and trembling though he didn't cry. His hatred was clear. He hated Saben Frost.

_I will have to bear it._

"What are you doing? Get away from them." The skin walker, Grieg, growled at the vampire child. His thick brows drawn together in a scowl that showed dainty fangs in the folds of his jowls.

"She's infected." Iris said irritably. "Not fit for the Master's auction."

Grieg looked dubiously at the child, the sallow complexion beneath the grime, he delicately sniffed the air as if his senses could detect such things.

Daniel had taken hold of the girl's hand and glared definitely up at them all and Saben took a small step toward him.

Grieg eyed Saben warily. "Iris hold the new one back, she can not control her appetites." At that instant Mezereon appeared a gleaming figure surround by an entourage of hulking skin walkers. He wore a look of mild irritation until he saw Saben and Iris standing together.

Both vampires bowed without hesitation, ready to supplicate themselves before the Master. "Is everything in readiness?" Mezereon addressed Iris who raised her head with a hazy look and smile and nodded.

"Ah, my beautiful darlings." He stroked Iris cheek and then his golden gaze flicked razor sharp toward Saben, the near unperceivable crease about his eye as if to say I don't trust you.

"My Lord." Saben curtsied as she had been taught, an excuse to remove her eyes from his face, to veil her expression with the fall of her hair. He took a fistful of that hair and forced her head up and pressed his lips to hers as if he could force the power of the spell into her mouth using his tongue. Saben glimpsed Daniel's horrified expression from the corner of her eye and she wanted to push Mezereon away. _I will have to bear it._

"I must go." He said sighing against her lips and she felt as if she would plummet to the earth when he released her.

He walked away and they all watched him go, helpless to the lure of his presence and the spell dug its claws into their flesh tempting them to follow him. The children were more frightened that before but Daniel's fierce expression had not changed.

"Have some respect." Iris hissed at Grieg who had the grace to flinch.

Grieg offered a deep conciliatory bow to Saben and then turning to his companion he barked. "Get her out, we'll inspect her. If you find anything…unsavoury, get rid of her."

As he spoke he reached for the girl. "Come here."

Daniel struggled to keep hold of the girl's hand as Grieg to hold of the other and pulled hard. "Let go you stupid little-"

Saben waded into the middle of children and grasped Daniel forcing her apart from the girl. Daniel began to scream and lash out at Saben who took his spit and curses with a stone face. Her teeth slipped out, her eyes turned fierce and hard as coins. _Stop struggling. I'm here to help you. Please believe me, Lark._

But the boy wasn't listening, he was half wild with fury and she put him down, her hands heavy with the sensation of it, holding him for the first time after all the years of separation. Something inside her broke and she retreated to stand behind Iris.

The skin walkers got the children back into line and resumed their march through the corridor.

"You handled it well." Iris said touching her hand and Saben jumped at the icy feel of her fingers.

Saben stared down at the child her small sweet mouth in the guise of a smile but she was a demon beneath, an acolyte of the meat dens for over three hundred years. Iris moved on swiftly, there was plenty to do.

Saben took her lapse in concentration to follow the path the skin walker had taken the small girl. Using her scent, the memory of her blood still tainting her insides, the subtle psychic connection that would lead her.

As she pushed on a door, unassuming leading to a private quarter, she heard leather slide across the fabric of trousers and she caught sight of the skin walker with his belt wrapped around his knuckles, his trousers bunched around his thighs.

So engrossed in what he was doing, he didn't seem to notice her as she crept up behind him and with two hands knotted together she brought her arms down with all her strength and hit him on the head. He collapsed on the floor unconscious.

The girl face was free from emotion and her eyes moved from Saben's face to the half open door behind her.

"Please." Saben said. "Please look at me."

The girl shook her head eyes now firmly fixed to the floor. The scent of cotton candy and underneath that something rotten or rotting, it was her scent and on the fringe of that sense she could feel the girl's mind.

"My name is Saben."

"I'm not afraid to die." She replied in a bear whisper. Her words a lie and Saben knew it.

"I'm not going to harm you."

She looked up then, eyes shyly roaming her face and sliding back to the floor. "I'm sorry about back there, I didn't mean to frighten you. What's your name?"

Her lips trembled before he spoke. "Star."

"Star, I'm here to help you."

Star shook her head, no. "There's no one out there to help me."

Saben felt a stab of pity, Star reminded her of herself, in another life. "That boy you were with." Saben's lip trembled for an instant. "The boy who protected you. I'm here to get you both out."

Star shook her head. "He said his daddy's coming to get him."

Saben had not thought of Tobias with her head too filled with Mezereon's madness, she hoped Star was right but she couldn't wait to find out. Saben shook her head vaguely. "That's right. His father sent me, Star."

Star's posture relaxed a little bit and then suddenly tensed, her eyes dark, flashing, accusatory. "How do I know you're not lying, all vampires lie."

"You know what vampires are?"

The girl nodded and reached out fingertips brushing Saben's skin, the blood inside her reacting, nausea rose in a suffocating wave. Saben had tripped forward into the child's mind and could see with perfect clarity what had befallen the child.

Star stood on the street alone, the distant sound of a baby crying, glass shattering in a nearby doorway, a man and woman screaming at one another to serenade Star's barefoot journey through the moonlit night.

The landscape was veiled with deep, dark shadows. It undulated with mysterious life and she was ignorant, blind, filled with a terrible grief that washed through Saben cleansing her of all other thought.

Out of the shadows a figure appeared and with perfect calm and authority he scooped the girl up in his arms and carried her away. She clung to the arms as strong as rock, her eyes were closed and tears silently leaking as if she were resigned to her fate.

"Let me help you both." Saben grunted as she came out of the vision, her canines enlarged and eyes solid spheres of gold.

Star took her time studying Saben's face, her small fingers hovering by the vampire's face but not quite touching and then she nodded.

"Good." Saben reached out a hand and Star took hold of it. "I need you to tell Daniel that it's okay to trust me."

"He's gone." Star mumbled.

"I'll get you to him, baby doll, but will you do me this favour?"

Star nodded reluctantly.


	31. Chapter 30

Thirty

Tobias' white knuckled clutch on the phone was beginning to hurt. "Everyone has arrived?" He asked, a subtle note of hysteria in his voice. The muffled reception made him break out in a light sweat.

"They're about to close the gates but I'm not so sure everyone has gone in, sir." One voice responded calmly.

"Forget about it, Sketch, twelve cars rode in, the roll is full." A thin reedy voice joined the conversation.

"Who didn't make it?" Tobias asked.

Static bursts of the agent's voice made him nervous. "Vakeel Yasin Khan…head of…Fifth house…shifters."

"Lord Khan, are you sure?"

"…Sir…"

"Face it Sketch, twelve cars went in, they've already closed the gates." The second voice grumbled.

"So who's gone in his place?" Tobias voiced the question.

"It's not confirmed, my Lord but I think your wife-"

"My wife?"

"Like I said it's not been confirmed."

He put the phone down and covered his face with trembling hands. "They're both in there." He exhaled, a breath that was long and heavy with worry.

Thea leant forward in her chair, a hand reaching across the surface of the table. "Everything will be okay, Blaise can take care of herself." Her words were utterly unconvincing.

He sank back down in his chair knuckles pressed to his mouth and tears glittering in his blue eyes as many valiant thoughts rolled through his mind.

"Many Kings of history could not ride out to war, Tobias." Thea murmured.

"I am no King."

*

Saben Mariley Frost was where she belonged, the one instant she could shuck of the tumult of reality and bathe unashamedly in the thing that made her almost happy. Her life was simple like this, and a dozen memories of setting up and breaking down after a set, the stench of dirty bodies bouncing to the insane rhythm of the bass and kit.

All the songs meant for screaming she sang slowly and underneath it all she savoured the memories of her human life.

Her eyes closed, not ready to take in the crowd sitting in the darkness beyond the stage lights, to acknowledge the glitter eyes of the People clinging to the memories of human faces some intense with concentration others slack with abandon but all trapped by the music. Her music.

She sang.

She had seen at least thirty People, all outsiders, with prowling and predatory grace, all hungry, all dangerous. They waited with mock patience for Mezereon to deliver as he had promised. The sweet meat of children sweetened still by the magic blood that ran through their veins.

Her hands balled into discreet fists by her side as she glided to high notes where there should have been growls.

The children had not yet been presented to them, she had not seen the thick of them but a few were separated and that was where she had left Star in hopes that she would be reunited with Daniel. She would be able to tell him that Saben was there to help. Only to help.

Her eyes opened for an instant, the terrifying and hopeful instant where she expected to catch a glimpse of Abberline. Hoping he had lingered for her sake. But the hope was small, unbidden and easily swallowed as her song faded to the dying notes of Mezereon's harpist.

The curtains closed and the soft sound of applause could be heard from behind it and the dull murmur of conversation rose and she was already looking for a way off stage. She had to get to Daniel and she had to do it quick.

*

Celsia Verain could have laughed but didn't. Watching Saben Frost on stage, her eyes so distant as if she were bespelled, and why not? The entire place was a trap, a trick, a measure put there by a paranoid boy to entice and hypnotise. Blaise Harman sat silent and still as a statue beside her, a delicate flush on her cheeks as she too watched Saben.

"Beautiful, eh?" Celsia whispered.

Blaise's had been gripping the arm rest of her chair until the fabric began to breach beneath her fingernails.

The curtains closed and they were plunged into darkness that was tinted by spells, Blaise's eyes found Celsia in the dark and the vampire forced a smile to her lips and began to clap. Others followed suit.

_Your boy can't be far._ Celsia said. _Remember our bargain, witch._

Blaise nodded. Her lips were pursed but she was thinking, yes, to kill Saben and make it look like an accident. She had no idea how she was going to achieve it. She had felt the constriction of magic the instant they had passed through the outer gate.

The stately house ran deep, right into the soil where the old world still screamed and it cushioned Power of many a spell caster that had help wave such a oppressive and complex tapestry of spells she could almost roll the taste on her tongue.

She couldn't even seem to recall the long journey, as soon as she had entered the doors she had been made to forget. She was half curious who could lay such powerful bindings.

"Come." Celsia's icy fingers grasped her hand which throbbed lightly. The vampire guided them to a space where the guests were converging, each with a glass in their hand, forced smiles and conversation desperate not to show a trace of true emotion.

_Act natural_. Celsia's voice hissed through her mind and the witch could have laughed.

Blaise was caught between the two real sensations of excitement and terror. To think she would see Daniel again and take him home to Tobias where they would be safe and not Celsia Verain nor Saben Frost would ever stand between them.

She knew now that Daniel should never be allowed to know of his human lineage, she would take pains to make sure he must never find out. What would they think, how could a half blood witch claim a throne that belonged to witch kind?

"Celsia?" A unfamiliar baritone voice made both women jump. They turned to see a small, gnarled frame hobbling toward them. He leant heavily on a stick that was as curved as his spine. A grotesque smile contorted the grim slash of his mouth, a crimson leer against the grey folds of his skin.

His eyes were bright and weeping blood, he brought with him a ugly, dark kind of magic kin with the deep dark earth. Blaise was revolted but remained stone faced even as Celsia Verain bowed low before him.

"Sir Druig, I am pleased to find you here."

"And I am surprised." His voice was part rasp and part lisp, as he spoke he revealed teeth as black and sharp as sin and the scent of his breath made Blaise recoil. He turned one black red eye to her. "And who is this?"

Celsia's hand curled around Blaise's upper arm in a half protective, half possessive manor. "A colleague."

"One of Abberline's women?" Druig seemed to smile but it was hard to distinguish from the size and shape of his mouth. Blaise could not suppress the sudden shudder that possessed her.

"There's no need for talk like that, sir, we are merely here to procure some meats for our Lord."

"As am I." He said and cast a wary eye about the room.

"And how is Oberon?" Blaise could only imagine what kind of twisted little creature this Oberon was and fought not to shudder a second time.

"The same, the same, his ways never change, Celsia, as you well know." He leaned forward on his stick, his head coming up to Celsia's belly though his voice, his ugliness made him seem larger than what he truly was.

"I am surprised that you say you are here on behalf of your master, Celsia." He said.

Celsia's grip on Blaise's arm tightened, cutting off the flow of blood, the smile froze on her lips and eyes became the silver-white shade of the moon. "And why's that, sir?"

"Because I'm right here."


	32. Chapter 31

Thirty One

"I didn't expect to see you here." Celsia Verain forced herself to smile as she raised her eyes to meet Abberline's cool expression. His face was carefully schooled into the smooth, affable mask reserved for business.

"I could say the same thing." Abberline smiled showing the tips of sharp teeth, all fluid grace and charm taking hold of Blaise's trembling hand and pressing cool lips to her knuckles. "Ms Harman, I didn't expect to see you in the dens." And unspoken, _do you think it wise?_

"I've come for my son." Blaise voice hissed from between her clenched teeth.

He nodded and smiled again, not a trace of emotion in his eyes. "You won't get out alive."

He turned his back on them and disappeared in the crowd, heads turned, recognised by all and his presence the gossip of the gathered People. Celsia gripped Blaise's arm. "You remember our bargain, witch." She hissed and followed Abberline.

"You should not have come here." Abberline murmurred when Celsia joined his side.

"You told me to find her." Celsia snapped.

"I did."

"I remember you told me quite specifically." Her hand hovered by her throat. "She's here, isn't she?"

He did not reply, his eyes sliding across the crowds. "What do you want me to do, Cebren? I have done what you asked and even this is wrong. I don't understand."

"Enough." He gripped her wrist hard. _Do you forget where you are?_

_Why are you here?_ She challenged. "I thought I was the designated babysitter."

Abberline smiled revealing sharp teeth.

But Celsia knew the answer to _why. _Because deep down in the coils of his being he could not let Saben Frost march to her doom, he had to be sure, he had to see it for himself. He was weak and she knew she could stick her knife into the tender underbelly of this sickly yellow weakness and twist the blade.

"You even think it-"

She shook her head, _no_. Because he was the Head of her House, he was the one she loved, the one who had lifted her from a nothing to a somebody. She could feel the treacherous prickle of tears at the corner of her eyes.

Great shadows moved behind Abberline's eyes, his own secrets he had not and could not confess to her or even himself. No, he couldn't leave, Saben had said it herself: _flesh and blood._

"Ladies and Gentlemen, it's time."

They turned together and a great set of doors opened, it was dark inside. Abberline could smell the child flesh even from this great a distance and was beckoned by it.

_You won't get her out alive._ Celsia softly shaped the words in his mind.

_She doesn't seem intent on staying alive._ Abberline replied despite himself.

Celsia smiled. _Then why are you still here?"_

Abberline walked into the dark passage without answering her question.

*

"I need to get out of here." Saben erupted, hands turning to fists as she paced up and down. Drowsy and drugged eyes turned to her, uncomprehending expression, no help could be offered by them. "I have to get out."

They were sprawled on sumptuous cushions, opium pipes draped on their lips, reams of pungent smoke commingling with the smoke of torches and incense. Someone was playing a pipe but the melody was jagged and infrequent, annoying Saben.

Iris face peered up from where she was half buried in cloth and limbs. "There's nowhere to go, sister."

"The master wants us here." Someone murmured.

"Come join us." Another raised their hand.

Saben slammed her fist against the locked door, the sound echoed down the corridors and the sudden sharp sound frightened the gathered, waking up if only for an instant from their dream state.

"You're panicking them." Iris hissed her pale face appearing beside her.

"You don't understand." Saben said, lips now trembling, the banks of her emotions ready to burst.

Iris small hand gripped her wrist. "I understand perfectly." Her hold became tight enough to snap bone. "You need to sit down, now."

Saben's insides were twisting, keen with worry, thoughts racing but the pain in her arm brought her back to senses. The shining eyes of the others were turned toward them, despite being intoxicated the danger was still there.

"You may be favoured by the master but you are no favourite amongst the others."

"Iris-"

"The only way out of this room is through me Saben Frost."

Saben stared down into the vampire child's wide eyes, her small perfectly shaped fangs gleaming in the torch light. Iris was not human, hadn't been human for far too long and the vicious little creature could tear Saben limb from limb.

"I never gave you a reason, Iris." Saben whispered.

Iris' grip on her hand loosened, her shoulders slumped and a growl vibrated past her sweetheart lips. "The door between the tapestries' is unlocked."

Saben cast a look at the tapestries, large rotting pictures of angels and men.

"Thank you."

"No." Iris said with a half snarl, half grin. "Never thank me, Saben Frost."

Saben sped to the tapestries, slithered through the delicate cloths and pushed hard at the door that gave way without a struggle. She was outside in the corridors, the scent of rosewater and beneath it she could find Star's cotton candy rot smell.

She came upon a skin walker guarding a set of doors. The doors were unremarkable, much like any other, it would lead to a large room but there must be something in side worth guarding.

The skin walker's lips drew back from sharp yellow teeth, a hiss was released by his tongue, lashing her like a swiping claw. "What are you doing out of your room, little morsel?" His lips smacked together and he made a show of tasting the air with a lolling, crimson tongue.

It looked half wild, already thin limbed and covered with a thick dark fur, its ears pointed and drawn back. It fell on all fours, its hands and feet bear, both dark and sharp nailed.

"I'm lost." She said, forcing such emotion into her words it was disoriented with it.

It growled and bounced back on two feet. "There are no lost ones in the dens only the found and the fools stupid enough to get caught where they don't belong."

"Are you calling me a fool?" She asked.

It nodded, neck crooked at an awkward broken angle, the next instant it launched toward her. A giant black blur, musky fur and saliva stench suddenly knocking her to the ground. It was laughing, a horrific hyena sound that filled her skull with horror.

"You're going to die, bitch." She didn't know if she heard it from its mouth or if it was the cruel little voice in her head telling her this.

But she couldn't die now, Daniel needed her so she couldn't simply give up. This thought fuelled her, forced her to raise her arms, her hand finding their way to its bristly throat, she could feel the muscles working against her grip, its gnashing teeth a hairs breadth from her face.

It's nails cut her arms, her thighs, she could feel her blood run and congeal and as her flesh fought to heal itself, it would open new slashes. The pain was near unbearable but she had to bear it.

She squeezed with every ounce of strength and felt something crack and crunch and her hands were sticky hot with its blood. The long limbed hairy carcass slumped on top of her, a strange air and gurgling sound rasping past its lips.

She struggled to free herself from him, her flesh stinging, her dress in bloodied ruin. She crawled on all fours toward the door, immaculate beech wood painted white and now stained with her blood.

She stood, legs trembling and after taking a moment to compose herself she wrenched open the door which gave little resistance. She closed the door behind her and was faced with a room full of skin walkers and children.

Large teeth flashed and a chorus of growls rose.

*

"What are you doing here, whore?" A dark skinned skin walker hissed, his slender tongue slithering past his thick lips much like the creature who had been outside.

There had been a long history of dislike between those of Mezereon's chosen harem and his enforcers, aside from the division of race, the skin walkers convinced that all the chosen were simpering whores and viciously indulged children.

Saben was deep in enemy territory and her limbs were trembling from her encounter outside. "I'm here to help." She said putting the full force of will behind her voice.

One of them snorted. "Trust that rickety old bastard to send a simpering whore to help." Saben had no clue who the _rickety old bastard_ was.

"Is this all? No more of you?" The dark skinned one said, nostrils flaring as it sucked in her scent.

She shook her head, no. "No one else could be spared."

"Too busy sucking each others quims and cocks to help with the important work." Another grunted.

Of course they didn't trust her, even she could see some of them crouched and ready to attack, those who were already in fur and pointed ears were bristled and large teeth gleaming, waiting to be provoked. But they didn't have a choice and niether did she.

Saben turned her attention to the children, beneath and between the skin walkers they were crouched or slouched, shivering with fright and some soiling themselves still. They had not fully succumbed to a spell and a wave of memories threatened to knock her senseless.

The skin walkers' eyes were on her, glittering with the keen edge of hunger waiting for her to make one wrong step and to set upon her like ravening dogs. She forced herself further into the room, scooping up a child into her arms, a child no more than a few years, perhaps it was Emil Motague, perhaps not. Her skin sung the sweet symphony of pain but she ignored it.

The child writhed in her arms and she looked into his face. "It's okay, baby." Tears prickled in her own eyes and so she began to hum softly to distract both herself and the baby. "Have the mangy old dogs been scaring you?"

Someone growled in warning but they had all gone to their work, bathing, oiling, clothing the children. There were only a few of them there, Daniel was not amongst them and neither was Star. They're being presented in rounds, she thought.

Her humming had turned into a softly sung song and it seemed to sooth the children and hypnotise the Hounds and soon it was as if time itself was standing still, the skin walkers and children were frozen, the child in her arms was now asleep on her shoulder.

"Why have you stopped?" One skin walker asked, his voice sluggish as if half asleep.

"Sing." A child demanded.

She was tongue tied for an instant and realised she had indeed woven a spell with her song. "Where are the others?" She asked softly to one side.

One child extended a chubby digit to the twin muslin drapes. She gently lay the baby in her arms down on the table and slipped between the curtains. She shut down the rational part of her mind, the part that said, _what the fuck do you think you're doing, there are monsters in there._ She was swamped by darkness, burdened with it, her senses dulling and drowning in it.

Someone or something took hold of her arms, icy hard skeletal grip and a cold damp thing invaded her mouth stifling her scream.

"Enough."

The torches ignited in an instant flooding the room in orange light. The bodies of children were strewn across the room, like rag dolls, broken limbed and face down, flesh smeared with the rich, thickness of their own blood and other things.

The smell was suddenly so strong, water clouded her vision and she fell to her knees in front of Star's little body still shuddering with breath.

The girl groaned, gold eyes flashing, "_Daniel…"_

Saben was mortified, she felt sicker at that instant than stumbling in on the bloodless bodies of children. She had failed Star and she had failed-

"Looking for this? Mezereon stood with his hand curled in the dark hair of a boy slumped at his feet, the child's face obscured but his body was as still and the child as silent as the dead.

"Daniel." Someone screamed though Saben was sure she hadn't spoken herself, wasn't able to speak around the thing in her mouth.


	33. Chapter 32

_First Draft_

Thirty Two

"Isn't this what you came for, songbird?" Mezereon asked, with a fist balled in the boy's hair and pulled the body to stand, the tips of the boy's bare feet barely brushing the ground.

The damp invasive thing that had made its way into Saben's Frost mouth, the thing seeking further passage down her throat slowly uncoiled itself and slipped away allowing her to suck unnecessary lungfuls of air.

Instead she choked on the foul scent of death and desecration.

"Let him go." She rasped.

"Who are you to demand such things of me?"

Mezereon bobbed the child up and down, his hair was wet with sweat and blood and when the boy's head lolled back Saben's heart fell to see Daniel's eyes opened wide in terror.

Saben opened her mouth to say his name but was interrupted.

"Daniel."

She turned and saw an unmistakable figure thinly veiled in shadows the torches cast. Blaise Harman, mouth open, frozen as she took in the sight of the broken bodies of children and People.

"Do not turn away from me." Mezereon hissed and Saben turned back to him obediently.

His eyes were as bright as twin suns, filled with a white hot fury. His face was stretched, gaunt, his teeth large and grotesque in his small cherubic mouth. He looked demonic, a fit architect for the carnage that surrounded them.

She couldn't believe she had once let him lay fingers, tongue and teeth on her. She couldn't believe she had once thought him a god,

Mezereon loosed his grip on Daniel and the boy feel to his knees, overcome with trembling like a newborn foal. The word _mommy _passed his lips and Saben could hear Blaise Harman's shuddering breath.

Her mind was blurred with equal parts of horror and panic. Tears fell down Saben's cheeks, salty hot and real.

"Did you think you could come into my home and steal from me?" Mezereon's voice boomed, bouncing off the bodies and the walls, grating on her ears.

"Steal from you?" Saben repeated incredulously and felt her teeth set on her bottom lip and all uncertainty evaporate. "You sick son of a bitch, that's my son."

Daniel's head flicked up and she briefly saw his eyes grow large and liquid with a new kind of terror. Mezereon barely spared a glance at the boy in his grasp before he carelessly flung him across the room. Another piece of worthless meat.

"Let me go." Blaise shouted desperate to go to the fallen boy.

"Not yet." Celsia Verain hissed in the witch's ear, holding her back with one hand. Staying deep in the safety of shadows, watching the scene from behind the witch's shoulder.

"So you have been keeping secrets from me, songbird." Mezereon approached her, one deliberate footstep placed in front of the other. His face as sharp and appealing as a crocodile.

"I don't even fucking know you." Saben hissed.

"You belong to me." He said as if it were a simple fact.

A chill went through her. "I belong to no one."

They circled one another slowly, each of his advancing steps met by one of hers retreating. "All that you have given me-"

"Meant nothing."

His eyes grew dark, cold, and desolate. "All the songs you sang…for me."

"No." She shook her head.

"Liar." He hissed bearing fangs curved like a snakes.

"Celsia." Saben said without looking. "You there?"

"Do it. Do it now." Celsia growled at Blaise and released her.

Mezereon and Saben had made an arc, and she now stood with her back to Daniel, shielding him from Mezereon thinking only that he would have to get through her to get to the child and maybe that would be enough time for Celsia…for Blaise…

The crackling smell of witch fire overpowered the necrotic stench, Saben could see it grow from Blaise's palms over Mezereon's shoulder, orange flames growing in ever expanding globes and the heat brought beads of sweat rolling from Saben's brow to her lips.

She prayed to a God she didn't believe in, begging for the flame to hit Mezereon, burn him from the face of the world and he would only be able to tread in her nightmares. _Blaise will save us all_, she allowed herself a modicum of hope.

The fire ball sailed over the two vampires as Mezereon knocked Saben to the ground and they landed in a sprawl of limbs. Weak blood made jelly of her arms and legs and Mezereon's throat locked on her throat with frightening precision. He tore at her skin until the blood warmed her skin.

Her vision blurred and she wanted to know where the witch fire had gone.

"Say it." Mezereon hissed his face covered in red, his eyes burning feverishly.

"No." She screamed around the tear in her throat, a butchered, gargling sound. She turned her head, trying to see Daniel. She had to know he was okay.

"No." Blaise screamed and ran to Daniel, wading through bodies before collapsing beside the boy. She clutched him to her chest and Saben could see he was barely breathing. The witch fire had hit Daniel, patches of skin peeling back others charred as black as coal.

"Daniel, please. Please say you're okay. Please, baby boy."

"Say it." Mezereon hissed in her ear, words dripping like poison bringing her back to herself.

Her eyes fastened on Blaise Harman and her son in the witch's arms.

"Say it and all can be forgiven. All could return to normal." Mezereon continued.

She could still feel the current of her blood spill uselessly to the floor, her vision fading, barely alive to use her mouth now, her lips trembled, working slowly as if she were going to say…

"Say it."

"She belongs to me."

Abberline stood with a hand around Celsia's throat and she was unable to speak or move. His eyes were glowing brighter than the hottest part of a flame, and he moved quickly, quicker than Mezereon had, quicker than Saben had ever seen.

In a flash of dark clothing on blue fire he was suddenly on top of Mezereon, pulling Mezereon off of her and then Mezereon was in the air, falling.

"Are you okay?" He asked Saben, his breath hot on her bloodied face.

Mezereon landed gracefully on his feet.

Saben stared up at Abberline as she had when she was a child, danger and wonder and dark things passed through her consciousness and she stared at him as if he were a phantom or an illusion. As if she were a child again, running through a forest…

"You should worry about your own hide, Cebren." Mezereon growled and launched himself at the vampire.

They tumbled to the floor, furious thrusting limbs, drawing blood and cracking bone.

Saben roused herself enough to turn on her stomach, her throat was bloody ribbons, more blood smeared the floor and even though her senses were failing she managed to crawl , drag herself toward the blurry vision of Daniel. She tried to speak but blood frothed past her lips and she was suddenly cradled by the beating of Daniel's human heart.

"You can't have her." Abberline said as there came a brief reprieve in their battle. "It's not difficult to understand."

"And will you kill her to keep her from me, just like you killed your mother?"

Abberline charged at the boy vampire, his hands grasping fistfuls of Chinese silk and with all his strength he threw Mezereon across the room where he landed in a pile of dead bodies.

A strange sound erupted from where he fell and when Mezereon's face appeared it was a grotesque mask of scorn. "I understand perfectly, boy." _Soulmates._

Abberline glared at him.

"You still leave your fate in the hands of dead gods?" Mezereon sneered. "It would be a pleasure to kill her, just like it was a pleasure to fuck her, to taste her."

Abberline was shaking with rage.

"And your little boy too." Mezereon showed more teeth than was natural, an ugly, animal creature, no he could not be mistaken for anything but a monster. "You think I couldn't see through your little spell? Why can't you look at him, Cebren?"

They came together again, jaw snapping and nails scoring deep welts and gouges in their vampire flesh. Each cut mended in seconds, each ribbon of blood rolling away to freshly healed flesh.

Abberline countering each of Mezereon's swift strikes, Abberline had the advantage of training and size and perhaps the fact that he had never been human. "You wouldn't kill me, brother." Mezereon said as his muscles began to cramp, when it dawned him for a brief instant that he might loose.

Abberline had him in a head lock, and he was pacified, his limbs flailing, no longer deadly.

"You are not my brother." Abberline replied coldly and wrenched his jaw apart. Not satisfied he plunged a hand into the boy's chest, nails finding easy passage through his skin and flesh, cracking bone to find the pulpy blackness of his dead heart.

He wrenched the organ from his chest and let it fall to the ground where it rolled toward Celsia Verain's feet.

Saben had lost her battle to reach Daniel, unconscious on the cold floor, her wounds were healing immeasurably slow and she was far to young to recover. So she dropped off the precipice into a thundering dark descent.

"Saben." Star cradled Saben's head in her small lap, sticky, cool hands gently stroking the vampire's brow. "Saben?"

Saben didn't respond, she didn't fight the free falling sensation dragging her down to death, to the surface of the underworld where she would be reunited with Daniel…

Abberline turned his eyes to the scene laid out before him, Saben's head cradled in the small child's lap and Daniel in Blaise's arms, perhaps dead, perhaps not.

Celsia was on her knees staring up at him.

He stared at the boy and watched as the black char slowly rolled off of his boyish cheeks in sooty particles. Scylla du Coudray's spell rolled away, his curly brown hair turned straight and black, his skin tanned and his mouth fuller.

"What have you done?" Blaise asked, staring at Daniel as if he became a new child altogether.

Daniel's eyes opened, brown eyes sparkling as they met Abberline's gaze and his mouth fell open.

Abberline lifted Saben in one arm and he held out his hand. "Come." He turned his back to both Blaise and Daniel.

Celsia rose shakily to her feet to follow.

"Not you."

Celsia's mouth hung open in disbelief.

Star slipped her small hand into Abberline's outstretched palm.

"Are we going home now?" Star asked in a small voice.

"Yes, sweetheart," Abberline murmured. "Quickly now, before I change my mind."


	34. Epilogue

Epilogue

_Four Years Later_

Darkness, deprived, depleted, anorexic and shivering. The thing could only writhe and wallow in the perfect blankness of its grave. It had no limbs no mouth, perhaps it only imagined having those things. One it may have even been female. Once it might even have had a name. It had forgotten over the years.

"Will she be in there forever?" A little girl asks softly staring down into the pit where the sexless monster writhes, uncomprehending of those standing above it.

"No." A man says softly and puts an affectionate hand on the little girl's skinny shoulder. "Just a long time yet."

It blinks icy blue eyes, half aware but wholly wild and not knowing they were above, a few feet above its very head. It could not hear, nor taste, nor smell beyond the grave dirt that invaded its insides, becoming part of its flesh and mind and lingering things that may still be…be…

"A very long time." The man says voice barely above a whisper.

"Why are you showing me this?" The little girl coughs into her fist, sick shivers wrack her skinny frame and the sight of the creature only makes her feel worse, as if the grave dirt were lodged in her own throat.

"She's an example." The man said glaring down at the writhing thing. "No one disobeys my word, no one of my House will defy me."

The girl curls an arm around the man's thigh. She thinks she will never defy her new father who plucked her from the ice, filth and darkness of slavery and cured her sickness. "Can we go?"

It can not see the trees on the surface, the grave stones, the bright blue summer skies above, bathing the girl and man in brilliant light. The little girl sighs.

The man speaks with his mind, shaping a name that slithers through the air and penetrates the earthy prison, _Oh, Celsia…_

"Come." He holds out his hand and the little girl takes hold of it.

In another state a worried father sits beside his son's bed and watches the boy while he sleeps. Floral print sheets tucked beneath his chin, his small fingers clasp the fabric as he dreams. His small mouth trembles, forming silent screams.

A woman stands in the doorway, grey eyes swirl like storms, arms crossed in front of her chest, a blood red Isis stone winks and a subtle spell emanates from the ruby facets but has no effect on the man.

"No one has to know." The man whispers as he has many times on nights like this, cornflower blue eyes bleak and inconsolable.

"Let him sleep." Comes the woman's reply.

He lifts his eyes to the doorway, he looks through her. "Leave."

The boy shivers in his nightmares and his mouth forms the word _mommy._ The woman leaves the room without saying another word.

The man touches his son's brow and watches it crease but the boy remains asleep. "Sweet dreams, Daniel." He whispers and magic flows from his hand to ease the boy's distress.

Across town. A girl with bubblegum pink hair raises a mic to her lips. She stares out at the bright eyes of the crowd, looks trough them, her eyes soulless. She opens her mouth to speak. "This is The Descent."

End


End file.
